REID'S ESSAYS 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN. 



FROM 



HIS COLLECTED WRITINGS 




«OT9«flM 



SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART. 

AND WITH THE FOOT NOTES 



THE EDITOR. 



EDINBURGH: 

MACLACHLAN AND STEWART. 

LONDON: LONGMANS AND COMPANY. 

MDCCCLIII. 






\ 



<& 



/ s~*7 



CONTENTS. $>?> 



ESSAYS ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN. 



Dedication, ...... 215 

Preface, ...... 216 

ESSAY I. — Preliminary. . 

Chapter I. Explication of Words, .• ."" ' . . 219 

II. Principles taken for granted, . . . 230 

III. Of Hypotheses, ' . ' . . . 234 

IV. Of Analogy, ... . 236 
V. Of the proper means of Knowing the operations of the Mind, 238 

VI. Of the difficulty of Attending to the operations of our own Minds, 240 

V "II. Division of the powers of the Mind, . . . 242 

VIII. Of Social [and Solitary] operations of Mind. . 244 



ESSAY II. — Of the Powers we have by means of our External Senses. 

Chapter I. Of the Organs of Sense, .... 245 

II. Of the Impressions on the Organs, Nerves, and Brain, 247 

III. Hypothesis concerning the Nerves and Brain, . 248 

IV. False Conclusions drawn from the impressions before mentioned, 253 

V. Of Perception, . . . .258 

VI. What it is to Account for a Phenomenon in Nature, 260 

VII. Sentiments of Philosophers about the Perceptions of External 

objects ; and first, of the theory of Father Malebranche 262 
VIII. Of the Common Theory of Perception ; and of the sentiments of 

the Peripatetics, and of Des Cartes, . . 267 

IX. The sentiments of Mr Locke, . . . 275 

X. The sentiments of Bishop Berkeley, . . . 280 

XI. Bishop Berkeley's sentiments of the nature of Ideas, 287 

XII. The sentiments of Mr Hume, . . . 292 

XIII. The sentiments of Anthony Arnauld, . . 295 

XIV. Reflections on the Common Theory of Ideas, . . 298 
XV. Account of the system of Leibnitz, " . ' . 306 

XVI. Of Sensation, . . . . ■ . 310 
XVII. Of the Objects of Perception ; and first, of Primary and Second- 
ary Qualities, .... 313 
XVIII. Of other objects of Perception, . . . 319 
XIX. Of Matter and of Space, .... 322 
XX. Of the Evidence of Sense, and of Belief in general, . 326* 
XXI. Of the Improvement of the Senses, . . . 330 
XXII. Of the Fallacy of the Senses, ... 334 



VI CONTENTS. 

Page 
ESSAY III.— Op Memory. 

Chapter I. Things obvious and certain with regard to Memory, . 339 

II. Memory an original faculty, . . . 340 

III. OfJ>uration, ..... 342 

IV. Of Identity, ..... 344 
V. Mr Locke's account of the Origin of our Ideas, and particularly 

of the idea of Duration, .... 346 

VI. Mr Locke's account of our Personal Identity, . 350 

VII. Theories concerning Memory, , . . 353 



ESSAY IV Of Conception. 

Chapter I. Of Conception, or Simple Apprehension in general, . 360 

II. Theories concerning Conception, . . 368 

III. Mistakes concerning Conception, *. . . 375 

IV. Of the Train of Thought in the mind, . . 379 



ESSAY V.— Of Abstraction. 

Chapter I. Of General Words, .... 389 

II. Of General Conceptions, . . . 391 

III. Of general conceptions formed by Analysing objects, . 394 

IV. Of general conceptions formed by Combination, . 398 
V. Observations concerning the Names given to our general notions, 403 

VI. Opinion of philosophers about Universals, . . 405 



ESSAY VI.— Of Judgment. 

Chapter I. Of Judgment in general, .... 413 

•II. Of Common Sense, .... 421 

III. Sentiments of philosophers concerning Judgment, . 426 

IV. Of First Principles in general, • • . 434 
V. The first principles of Contingent Truths. [ On Consciousness, ~\ 441 

VI. First principles of Necessary Truths, . . 452 

VII. Opinions, ancient and modern, about First Principles, . 462 

VIII. Of Prejudices, the causes of error, . . 468 



ESSAY VII.— Of Reasoning. 

Chapter I. Of Reasoning in general, and of Demonstration, • 475 

II. Whether Morality be capable of demonstration, . 478 

■wJJI. Of Probable Reasoning, .... 481 

IV. Of Mr Hume's Scepticism with regard to Reason, . 484 



ESSAY VIII.— Of Taste. 

Chapter I. Of Taste in general, .... 490 

II. Of the Objects of taste, and first of Novelty, . 493 

[II. Of Grandeur, .... 494 

IV. Of Beauty, ..... 498 



ESSAYS 

ON THK 

INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN, 

By THOMAS REID, D.D., F.R.S.E., 

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, 
" Who bath put wisdom in the inward part* ?*— Job. 



fcf" This impression of the " Essays on the Intellectual Powers," is made from the 
only authentic edition — that of 1785, in 4to. For the convenience of reference the pages 
of that edition are distinguished in the present ; and by these pages I shall always, in 
the notes, prospectively, quote. They will be found marked both in the text and on the 
lower margin — H. 



DEDICATION 



MR DUGALD STEWART, 

LATELY PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS, NOW PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 

AND 

DR JAMES GREGORY, 

PROFESSOR OF THE THEORY OF PHYSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.* 



My. Dear Friends, — I know not to 
whom I can address these Essays with 
more propriety than to you ; not only on 
account of a friendship begun in early life 
on your part, though in old age on mine, 
and in one of you I may say hereditary ; 
nor yet on account of that correspondence 
in our literary pursuits and amusements, 
which has always given me so great plea- 
sure ; but because, if these Essays have 
any merit, you have a considerable share 
in it, having not only encouraged me to hope 
that [iv.] they may be useful, but favoured 
me with your observations on every part of 
them, both before they were sent to the 
press, and while they were under it. 

I have availed myself of your observa- 
tions, so as to correct many faults that 
might otherwise have escaped me ; and I 
have a very grateful sense of your friend- 
ship, in giving this aid to one who stood 
much in need of it ; having no shame, but 
much pleasure, in being instructed by those 
who formerly were my pupils, as one of you 
was. 

It would be ingratitude to a man whose 
memory I most highly respect, not to men- 
tion my obligations to the late Lord Karnes, 
for the concern he was pleased to take in 
this "Work. Having seen a small part of 
it, he urged me to carry it on ; took acount 
of my progress from time to time ; revised 
it more than once, as far as it was carried, 
before his death ; and gave me his observa- 
tions on it, both with respect to the matter 
and the expression. On some points we 

• See above, in " Correspondence," p. 65, a.— H. 
[iii.-vi.l 



differed in opinion, and debated them 
keenly, both in conversation and by many 
letters, without any abatement of his affec- 
tion, or of his zeal for the work's being 
carried on and published : for he had too 
much liberality of mind not to allow to [v.] 
others the same liberty in judging which he 
claimed to himself. 

It is difficult to say whether that worthy 
man was more eminent in active life or 
in speculation. Very rare, surely, have 
been the instances where the talents for 
both were united in so eminent a degree. 

His genius and industry, in many differ- 
ent branches of literature, will, by his 
works, be known to posterity : his private 
virtues and public spirit, his assiduity, 
through a long and laborious life, in many 
honourable public offices with which he was 
entrusted, and his zeal to encourage and 
promote everything that tended to the 
improvement of his country in laws, litera- 
ture, commerce, manufactures, and agricul- 
ture, are best known to his friends and 
contemporaries. 

The favourable opinion which he, and 
you my friends, were pleased to express 
of this work, has been my chief encourage- 
ment to lay it before the public ; and per- 
haps, without that encouragement, it had 
never seen the light : for I have always 
found, that, without social intercourse, even 
a favourite speculation languishes; and 
that we cannot help thinking the better of our 
own opinions [vi.] when they are approved 
by those whom we esteem good judges. 

You know that the substance of these 
Essays was delivered annually, for more 



21(5 



PREFACE. 



than twenty years, in Lectures to a large 
body of the more advanced students in this 
University, and for several years before, in 
another University. Those who heard me 
with attention, of whom I presume there 
are some hundreds alive, will recognise the 
doctrine which they heard, some of them 
thirty years ago, delivered to them more 
diffusely, and with the repetitions and illus- 
trations proper for such audiences. 

I am afraid, indeed, that the more intel- 
ligent reader, who is conversant in such 
abstract subjects, may think that there are 
repetitions still left, which might be spared. 
Such, I hope, will consider, that what to 



one reader is a superfluous repetition, to 
the greater part, less conversant in such 
subjects, may be very useful. If this apo- 
logy be deemed insufficient, and be thought 
to be the dictate of laziness, I claim some 
indulgence even for that laziness, at my 
period of life, [vii ] 

You who are in the prime of life, with 
the vigour which it inspires, will, I hope, 
make more happy advances in this or in any 
other branch of science to which your talents 
may be applied. 

Tho. Reid. 
Glasgow College, June I, 1785. 



PREFACE. 



Human knowledge may be reduced to 
two general heads, according as it relates 
to body or to mind ; to things material or 
to things intellectual.* 

The whole system of bodies in the uni- 
verse, of which we know but a very small 
part, may be called the Material World ; 
the whole system of minds, from the infinite 
Creator to the meanest creature endowed 
with thought, may be called the Intellectual 
World. These are the two great kingdoms 
of nature-|* that fall within our notice ; 
and about the one, or the other, or things 
pertaining to them, every art, every science, 
and every human thought is employed ; nor 
can the boldest flight of imagination carry 
us beyond their limits. 

Many things there are, indeed, regarding 
the nature and the structure both of body 
and of mind, which our faculties cannot 
reach ; many difficulties which the ablest 
philosopher cannot resolve : but of other 



* See Stewan 's " Life and Writings of Reid," 
supra, p. 14 ; and his " Elements," vol. I., introduc- 
tion ; Jouffroy, in the preface to his " Oeuvres de 
Reid," t. i., pp. 23-53. This important Preface will 
soon be made generally accessibleto the British pub- 
lic by a highly competent translator. — H. 

t The term Natwe is used sometimes in a wider, 
sometimes in a narrower extension. When employed 
in its most extensive meaning, it embraces the two 
worlds of mind and matter. When employed in its 
more restricted signification, it is a synonyme for the 
latter only, and is then used in contradistinction to 
the former. In the Greek philosophy, the word 
Quo-i; was general in its meaning ; and the great 
branch of philosophy styled " physical or physiolo- 
gical," included under it not only the sciences of 
matter, but also th< se of mind. With us, the term 
Nature is mo e vaguely extensive than the terms, 
physics, ; h si a!, physiology, physiological, or even 
tnan the adjective natural ; whereas, in the philo- 
sophy of Germany, Natur, and its correlatives, 
whether of Greek or Latin derivation, are, in general, 
exprcssive-of the woild of matter in contrast to the 
world ol- intelligence. — H. 



[vii -2] 



natures, if any other there be, we have no 
knowledge, no conception at all. 

That everything that exists must be either 
corporeal or incorporeal is evident. But 
it is not so evident that every thing [2] that 
exists must either be corporeal or endowed 
with thought. Whether there be in the 
universe beings which are neither extended, 
solid, and inert, like body, nor active and 
intelligent, like mind, seems to be beyond 
the reach of our knowledge. There appears 
to be a vast interval between body and 
mind ; and whether there be any interme- 
diate nature that connects them together, 
we know not. 

We have no reason to ascribe intelli- 
gence, or even sensation, to plants ; yet 
there appears in them an active force and 
energy, which cannot be the result of any 
arrangement or combination of inert matter. 
The same thing may be said of those powers 
by which animals are nourished and grow, 
by which matter gravitates, by which mag- 
netical and electrical bodies attract and 
repel each other, and by which the parts of 
solid bodies cohere. 

Some have conjectured that the pheno- 
mena of the material world which require 
active force, are produced by the continual 
operation of intelligent beings : others have 
conjectured that there may be in the uni- 
verse, beings that are active, without in- 
telligence, which, as a kind of incorporeal 
machinery, contrived by the supreme wis- 
dom, perform their destined task without 
any knowledge or intention.* But, laying 
aside conjecture, and all pretences to deter- 
mine in things beyond our reach, we must 

* Like the tripods of Vulcan— 

"O^jat it ituToptxroi Btioi hvrxictr' ikyuutt-— H. 



PREFACE. 



217 



rest in this, that body and mind are the 
01 ih kinds of being of which we can have 
any knowledge, or can form any concep- 
tion. If there are other kinds, they are 
not discoverable by the faculties which God 
hath given us ; and, with regard to us, are 
as if they were not. [3] 

As, therefore, all our knowledge is con- 
fined to body and mind, or things belonging 
to them, there are two great branches of 
philosophy, one relating to body, the other 
to mind. The properties of body, and the 
laws that obtain in the material system, are 
the objects of natural philosophy, as that 
word is now used- The branch which 
treats of the nature and operations of minds 
has, by some, been called Pneumatology.* 
And to the oneor the otherof these branches, 
the principles of all the sciences belong. 

What variety there may be of minds or 
thinking beings, throughout this vast uni- 
verse, we cannot pretend to say. We dwell 
in a little corner of God's dominion, dis- 
joined from the rest of it. The globe which 
we inhabit is but one of seven planets that 
encircle our sun. What various orders of 
beings may inhabit the other six, their 
secondaries, and the comets belonging to 
our system, and how many other suns may 
be encircled with like systems, are things 
altogether hid from us. Although human 
reason and industry have discovered, with 
great accuracy, the order and distances of 
the planets, and the laws of their motion, 
we have no means of corresponding with 
them. That they may be the habitation of 
animated beings, is very probable ; but of 
the nature or powers of their inhabitants, 
we are perfectly ignorant. Every man is 
conscious of a thinking principle, or mind, 
in himself ; and we have sufficient evidence 
of a like principle in other men. The 
actions of brute animals shew that they 
have some thinking principle, though of a 
nature far inferior to the human mind. And 
everything about us may convince us of the 
existence of a supreme mind, the Maker and 
Governor of the universe. These are all 
the minds of which reason can give us any 
certain knowledge. [4] 

The mind of man is the noblest work of 
God which reason discovers to us, and, 
therefore, on account of its dignity, deserves 
our study, "t* It must, indeed, be acknow- 
ledged, that, although it is of all objects the 
nearest to us, and seems the most within 
our reach, it is very difficult to attend to 
its operations so as to form a distinct notion 



• Now properly superseded by the term Psychol- 
ogy ; to which no competent objection can be made, 
and which affords us — what the various clumsy peri, 
phrases in ue do not — a convenient adjective, psycho- 
logical.— H. 

t " On earth," says a forgotten philosopher, 
" there is nothing great but Man ; in man there is 
nothing great but Mind."— H. 



[3—5] 



of them ; and on that account there is no 
branch of knowledge in which the ingenious 
and speculative have fallen into so great 
errors, and even absurdities. These errors 
and absurdities have given rise to a general 
prejudice against all inquiries of this nature. 
Because ingenious men have, for many 
ages, given different and contradictory 
accounts of the powers of the mind, it is 
concluded that all speculations concerning 
them are chimerical and visionary. 

But whatever effect this prejudice may 
have with superficial thinkers, the judicious 
will not be apt to be carried away with it. 
About two hundred years ago, the opinions 
of men in natural philosophy were as various 
and as contradictory as they are now con- 
cerning the powers of the mind. Galileo, 
Torricelli, Kepler, Bacon, and Newton, 
had the same discouragement in their 
attempts to throw light upon the material 
system, as we have with regard to the in- 
tellectual. If they had been deterred by 
such prejudices, we should never have 
reaped the benefit of their discoveries, 
which do honour to human nature, and will 
make their names immortal. The motto 
which Lord Bacon prefixed to some of his 
writings was worthy of his genius, Inveniam 
viam aut faciam.* 

There is a natural order in the progress 
of the sciences, and good reasons may be 
assigned why the philosophy of body should 
[5] be elder sisler to that of mind, and of a 
quicker growth ; but the last hath the prin- 
ciple of life no less than the first, and will 
grow up, though slowly, to maturity. The 
remains of ancient philosophy upon this 
subject, are venerable ruins, carrying the 
marks of genius and industry, sufficient to 
inflame, but not to satisfy our curiosity. In 
later ages, Des Cartes was the first that 
pointed out the road we ought to take in 
those dark regions. Malebranche, Arnauld, 
Locke, Berkeley, Buffier, Hutcheson, 
Butler, Hume, Price, Lord Karnes, have 
laboured to make discoveries — nor have they 
laboured in vain; for, however different 
and contrary their conclusions are, how- 
ever sceptical some of them, they have all 
given new light, and cleared the way to those 
who shall come after them. 

We ought never to despair of human 
genius, but rather to hope that, in time, 
it may produce a system of the powers and 
operations of the human mind, no less cer- 
tain than those of optics or astronomy. 

This is the more devoutly to be wished, 
that a distinct knowledge of the powers of 
the mind would undoubtedly give great light 
to many other branches of science. Mr 
Hume hath justly observed, that " all the 



• See Mr Stewart's " Philosophical Essays," Pre- 
liminary Disseitation, ch. ii 



218 



PREFACE. 



sciences have a relation to human nature ; 
and, however wide any of them may seem 
to run from it, they still return hack hy one 
passage or another. This is the centre and 
capital of the sciences,* which, being once 
masters of, we may easily extend our con- 
quests everywhere." 

The faculties of our minds are the tools 
and engines we must use in every disquisi- 
tion ; and the better we understand their [6] 
nature and force, the more successfully we 
shall he able to apply them. Mr Locke 
gives this account of the occasion of his 
entering upon his essay concerning human 
understanding : — " Five or six friends," 
says he, " meeting at my chamber, and dis- 
coursing on a subject very remote from 
this, found themselves quickly at a stand 
by the difficulties that rose on every side. 
After we had for a while puzzled ourselves, 
without coming any nearer to a resolution 
of those doubts that perplexed us, it came 
into my thoughts that we took a wrong 
course ; and that, before we set ourselves 
upon inquiries of that nature, it was neces- 
sary to examine our own abilities, and see 
what objects our understandings were fitted 
or not fitted to deal with. This I proposed 
to the company, who all readily assented ; 
and thereupon it was agreed that this should 
be our first enquiry.'' If this be commonly 
the cause of perplexity in those disquisi- 
tions which have least relation to the mind, 
it must be so much more in those that have 
an immediate connection with it. 

The sciences may be distinguished into 
two classes, according as they pertain to the 
material or to the intellectual world. The 
various parts of natural philosophy, the 
mechanical arts, chemistry, medicine, and 
agriculture, belong to the first ; but, to the 
last, belong grammar, logic, rhetoric, na- 



* Hume probably had the siying of Poljrbius in 
his eye, who calls History the mother city (/j^rtirt' 
Xis ) of Philosophy.— H. 



tural theology, morals, jurisprudence, law. 
politics, and the fine arts. The know- 
ledge of the human mind is the root from 
which these grow, and draw their nourish- 
ment.* Whether, therefore, we consider 
the dignity of this subject, or its subser- 
viency to science in general, and to the 
noblest branches of science in particular, it 
highly deserves to be cultivated. [7] 

A very elegant writer, on the sublime and 
beautiful ,-f- concludes his account of the 
passions thus : — " The variety of the pas- 
sions is great, and worthy, in every branch 
of that variety, of the most diligent inves- 
tigation. The more accurately we search 
into the human mind, the stronger traces 
we everywhere find of His wisdom who made 
it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of 
the body may be considered as a hymn to 
the Creator, X the use of the passions, 
which are the organs of the mind, cannot 
be barren of praise to Him, nor unproductive 
to ourselves of that noble and uncommon 
union of science and admiration, which a 
contemplation of the works of infinite Wis- 
dom alone can afford to a rational mind ; 
whilst referring to Him whatever we find of 
right, or good, or fair, in ourselves, dis- 
covering His strength and wisdom even in our 
own weakness and imperfection, honouring 
them where we discover them clearly, and 
adoring their profundity where we are lost 
in our search, we may be inquisitive with- 
out impertinence, and elevated without 
pride ; we may be admitted, if I may dare 
to say so, into the counsels of the Almighty, 
by a consideration of his works. This ele- 
vation of the mind ought to be the principal 
end of all our studies, which, if they do not 
in some measure effect, they are of very 
little service to us." 

* It is justly observed by M. Jouffroy, that the 
division here enounced is not in principle identical 
with that previrusly propounded. — H. 

f Burke.— H. 

J Galen is referred to — H. 



i.r] 



ESSAYS 

ON THB 

INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN. 



ESSAY I. 

PRELIMINARY 



CHAPTER I. 

EXPLICATION OP WORDS. 

There is no greater impediment to the 
advancement of knowledge than the ambi- 
guity of words. To this chiefly it is owing 
that we find sects and parties in most 
branches of science ; and disputes which 
are carried on from age f o age, without being 
brought to an issue. 

Sophistry has been more effectually ex- 
cluded from mathematics and natural 
philosophy than from other sciences. In 
mathematics it had no place from the begin- 
ning ; mathematicians having had the wis- 
dom to define accurately the terms they use, 
and to lay down, as axioms, the first prin- 
ciples on which their reasoning is grounded. 
Accordingly, we find no parties among ma- 
thematicians, and hardly any disputes.* [10] 

In natural philosophy, there was no less 
sophistry, no less dispute and uncertainty, 
than in other sciences, until, about a cen- 
tury and a half ago, this science began to be 
built upon the foundation of clear defini- 
tions and self-evident axioms. Since that 
time, the science, as if watered with the 
dew of Heaven, hath grown apace ; dis- 
putes have ceased, truth hath prevailed, 
and the science hath received greater in- 
crease in two centuries than in two thous- 
and years before. 

It were to be wished that this method, 
which hath been so successful in those 
branches of science, were attempted in 
others ; for definitions and axioms are the 
foundations of all science. But that defini- 
tions may not be sought where no defini- 
tion can be given, nor logical definitions be 
attempted where the subject does not admit 
of them, it may be proper to lay down some 
general principles concerning definition, for 



* It was not the superior wisdom of mathema- 
ticians, but the simple and palpable character of their 
object-matter, which determined the difference.— H. 



[9-11] 



the sake of those who are less conversant 
in this branch of logic. 

When one undertakes to explain any art 
or science, he will have occasion to use 
many words that are common to all who 
use the same language, and some that are 
peculiar to that art or science. Words of 
the last kind are called terms of the art, and 
ought to be distinctly explained, that their 
meaning may be understood. 

A definition* is nothing else but an ex- 
plication of the meaning of a word, by words 
whose meaning is already known. Hence 
it is evident that every word cannot be 
defined ; for the definition must consist of 
words ; and there could be no definition, if 
there were not words previously understood 
without definition. Common words, there- 
fore, ought to be used in their common 
acceptation ; and, when they have different 
acceptations in common language, these, 
when it is necessary, ought to be distin- 
guished. But they require no definition. 
It is sufficient to define words that are un- 
common, or that are used in an uncommon 
meaning. 

It may farther be observed, that there 
are many words, which, though they may 
need explication, cannot be logically defined. 
A [ 1 1 ] logical definition — that is, a strict and 
proper definition — must express the kind 
[genus] of the thing defined, and the spe- 
cific difference by which the species defined 
is distinguished from every other species 
belonging to that kind. It is natural to the 
mind of man to class things under various 
kinds, and again to subdivide every kind 
into its various species. A species may 
often be subdivided into subordinate species, 
and then it is considered as a kind. 

From what has been said of logical defi- 
nition, it is evident, that no word can be 
logically defined which does not denote a 



* In what follows, there is a confusion of defini- 
tions verbal and real, which should have been care- 
fully distinguished. — H. 



220 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



£eS8AY I. 



species ; because such things only can have 
a specific difference ; and a specific differ- 
ence is essential to a logical definition. 
On this account there can be no logical 
definition of individual things, such as 
London or Paris. Individuals are distin- 
guished either by proper names, or by acci- 
dental circumstances of time or place ; but 
they have no specific difference ; and, there- 
fore, though they may be known by pro- 
per names, or may be described by circum- 
stances or relations, they cannot be defined. * 
It is no less evident that the most general 
words cannot be logically defined, because 
there is not a more general term, of which 
they are a species. 

Nay, we cannot define every species of 
things, because it happens sometimes that 
we have not words to express the specific 
difference. Thus, a scarlet colour is, no 
doubt, a species of colour ; but how shall 
we express the specific difference by which 
scarlet is distinguished from green or blue ? 
The difference of them is immediately per- 
ceived by the eye ; but we have not words 
to express it. These things we are taught 
by logic. 

Without having recourse to the prin- 
ciples of logic, we may easily be satisfied 
that words cannot be defined, which signify 
things perfectly simple, and void of all com- 
position. This observation, I think, was 
first made by Des Cartes, and afterwards 
more fully illustrated by Locke, -j- And, 
however obvious it appears to be, many in- 
stances may be given of great philosophers 
who have perplexed [12] and darkened the 
subjects they have treated, by not knowing, 
or not attending to it. 

When men attempt to define things which 
cannot be defined, their definitions will 
always be either obscure or false. It was 
one of the capital defects of Aristotle's phi- 
losophy, that he pretended to define the 
simplest things, which neither can be, nor 
need to be defined — such as time and mo- 
tivn.% Among modern philosophers, I 



* It is well said by the old logicians, Omnis in- 
tuitiva notitia est definition — that is, a view of the 
thinj. itself is its best definition. \\\i *his is true, 
both of the objects of sense, and of the objects of self- 
consciousness. — H. 

t This is incorrect. Des Cartes has little, and 
Locke no title to praise for this observation. It had 
been made by Aristotle, and alter him by many 
others; while, subsequent to Des Cartes, and pre- 
viovs to Locke, Pascal and the Poit- Royal Logicians, 
to say nothing of a paper of Leibnitz, in 1684, had re- 
duced it to a matter of commonplace. In this instance, 
Locke can, indeed, be proved a borrower. Mr Stewart 
(" Philosophical Essays," Note A) is wrong in think- 
ing that, after Des Cartes, Lord Stair is the earliest 
philosopher by whom this logical principle was 
enounced ; for Stair, as a writer, is subsequent to 
the authors adduced. — H. 

% There is not a little, however, to be said in vin- 
dication of Aristotle's definitions. Leibnitz is not 
the only modern philosopher who has applauded that 
of Motion, which requires, however, some ilh s- 
tration of the special significance of its terms — H. 

ri2, is] 



know none that has abused definition so 
much as Carolus [Christianus] Wolfius, the 
famous German philosopher, who, in a 
work on the human mind, called a Psycho- 
logia Empirica," consisting of many hun- 
dred propositions, fortified by demon- 
strations, with a proportional accompani- 
ment of definitions, corollaries, and scholia, 
has given so many definitions of things 
which cannot be defined, and so many de- 
monstrations of things self-evident, that 
the greatest part of the work consists of 
tautology, and ringing changes upon 
words.* 

There is no subject in which there is 
more frequent occasion to use words tha; 
cannot be logically defined, than in treating 
of the powers and operations of the mind. 
The simplest operations of our minds must 
all be expressed by words of this kind. No 
man can explain, by a logical definition, 
what it is to think, to apprehend, to believe, 
to will, to desire. Every man who under- 
stands the language, has some notion of the 
meaning of those words ; and every man 
who is capable of reflection may, by attend- 
ing to the operations of his own mind, 
which are signified by them, form a clear 
and distinct notion of them ; but they can- 
not be logically defined. 

Since, therefore, it is often impossible to 
define words which we must use on this 
subject, we must as much as possible use 
common words, in their common accepta- 
tion, pointing out their various senses where 
they are ambiguous ; and, when we are 
obliged to use words less common, we must 
endeavour to explain them [13] as well as 
we can, without affecting to give logical de- 
finitions, when the nature of the thing does 
not allow it. 

The following observations on the mean- 
ing of certain words are intended to supply, 
as far as we can, the want of definitions, by 
preventing ambiguity or obscurity in the 
use of them. 

1. By the mind of a man, we understand 
that in him which thinks, remembers, rea- 
sons, wills.-)- The essence both of body and 
of mind is unknown to us. We know cer- 
tain properties of the first, and certain oper- 
ations of the last, and by these only we can 
define or describe them. We define body 
to be that which is extended, solid, move- 
able, divisible. In like manner, we define 
mind to be that which thinks. We are con- 
cious that we think, and that we have a 
variety of thoughts of different kinds — such 
as seeing, hearing, remembering, delibe- 
rating, resolving, loving, hating, and many 



* This judgment is not false ; but it is exaggerated 
— H. 

t This corresponds to Aristotle's second definition 
of the soul, or that a posteriori. Vide supra, p. 203 
a, note « — H. 



CHAP. I.] 



EXPLICATION OF WORDS. 



221 



other kinds of thought — all which we are 
taught by nature to attribute to one internal 
principle ; and this principle of thought we 
call the mind or soul of a man. 

2. By the operations* of the mind, we un- 
derstand every mode of thinking of which 
we are conscious. 

It deserves our notice, that the various 
modes of thinking have always, and in all 
languages, as far as we know, been called 
by the name of operations of the mind, or 
by names of the same import. To body 
we ascribe various properties, but not oper- 
ations, properly so called : it is extended, 
divisible, moveable, inert ; it continues in 
any state in which it is put ; every change 
of its state is the effect of some force im- 
pressed upon it, and is exactly proportional 
to the force impressed, and in the precise 
direction of that force. These are the ge- 
neral properties of matter, and these are 
not operations ; on the contrary, they all 
imply its being a dead, inactive thing, 
which moves only as it is moved, and acts 
only by being acted upon.-t* [14] 

But the mind is, from its very nature, a 
living and active being. Everything we 
know of it implies life and active energy ; 
and the reason why all its modes of thinking 
are called its operations, is, that in all, or in 
most of them, it is not merely passive, as 
body is, but is really and properly active. 

In all ages, and in all languages, ancient 
and modern, the various modes of thinking 
have been expressed by words of active 
signification, such as seeing, hearing, reason- 
ing, willing, and the like. It seems, there- 
fore, to be the natural judgment of man- 
kind, that the mind is active in its various 
ways of thinking : and, for this reason, they 
are called its operations, and are expressed 
by active verbs. 

It may be made a question, What regard 
is to be paid to this natural judgment ? 
May it not be a vulgar error ? Philosophers 
who think so have, no doubt, a right to be 
heard. But, until it is proved that the 
mind is not active in thinking, but merely 
passive, the common language with regard 
to its operations ought to be used, and ought 
not to give place to a phraseology invented 
by philosophers, which implies its being 
merely passive. 

3. The words power and faculty, which 
are often used in speaking of the mind, 
need little explication. Every operation 
supposes a power in the being that oper- 
rates ; for to suppose anything to operate, 
which has no power to operate, is mani- 
festly absurd. But, on the other hand, 

* Operation, Act, Energy, are nearly convertible 
terms ; and are opposed to Faculty, (of which anon,) 
as the actual to the potential — H. 

f " Materiae datum est cogi, sed cogere Memi." 
Maniuus.— H. 
[14. 15] 



there is no absurdity in supposing a being 
to have power to operate, when it does not 
operate. Thus I may have power to walk, 
when I sit ; or to speak, when I am silent. 
Every operation, therefore, implies power ; 
but the power does not imply the operation. 

The faculties of the mind, and its powers, 
are often used as synonymous expressions. 
But, as most synonymes have some minute 
distinction that deserves notice, I apprehend 
that the word faculty [15] is most properly 
applied to those powers of the mind which 
are original and natural, and which make a 
part of the constitution of the mind. There 
are other powers, which are acquired by 
use, exercise, or study, which are not called 
faculties, but habits. There must be some- 
thing in the constitution of the mind neces- 
sary to our being able to acquire habits — 
and this is commonly called capacity.* 

4. We frequently meet with a distinction 
in writers upon this subject, between things 
in the mind, and things external to the mind. 
The powers, faculties, and operations of the 
mind, are things in the mind. Everything 
is said to be in the mind, of which the mind 
is the subject. It is self-evident that there 
are some things which cannot exist without 
a subject to which they belong, and of which 
they are attributes. Thus, colour must be 
in something coloured ; figure in something 
figured ; thought can only be in something 
that thinks ; wisdom and virtue cannot exist 
but in some being that is wise and virtuous. 
When, therefore, we speak of things in the 
mind, we understand by this, things of which 
the mind is the subject. Excepting the 
mind itself, and things in the mind, all other 
things are said to be external. It ought 
therefore to be remembered, that this dis- 
tinction between things in the mind and 
things external, is not meant to signify the 
place of the things we speak of, but their 
subject. •{* 

There is a figurative sense in which things 
are said to be in the mind, which it is suf- 
ficient barely to mention. We say such a 
thing was not in my mind ; meaning no more 
than that I had not the least thought of it. 
By a figure, we put thething for the thought 



* These terms properly stand in the following re- 
lations : — Powers are active and passive, natural 
and acquired. Powers, natural ar d active„are railed 
Faculties : Powers, natural and passive, Capacities 
or Receptivities : Powers acquired are Habits, and 
habit is used both in an active and in a passive^ense; 
the Power, again, of acquiring a habit, is called a 
Disposition.— On the meaning of the term Power, see 
further, under the first Essay on the Active Powers, 
chap, iii., p 23— H 

•f- Subject and Object are correlative terms. The 
former is properly id in quo : the latter, id circa 
quod. Hence, in psychological language, the subject, 
absolutely, is the mind that knows or thinks—* e., 
the mind considered as the -subject r.f knowledge or 
thought ; the object, that which is known, orthought 
abo'.it. The adjectives subjective and objective are I 
convenient, if not indispensable, expressions. — H. 



*! 



AC 









222 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



Qessay I. 



of it. In this sense external things are in 
the mind as often as they are the objects of 
our thought. 

5. Thinking is a very general word, which 
includes all the operations of our minds, and 
is so well understood as to need no defi- 
nition." [16] 

To perceive, to remember, to he conscious, 
.and to conceive or imagine, are words com- 
mon to philosophers and to the vulgar. 
They signify different operations of the 
mind, which are distinguished in all lan- 
guages, and by all men that think. I shall 
endeavour to use them in their most com- 
mon and proper acceptation, and I think 
they are hardly capable of strict definition. 
But, as some philosophers, in treating of the 
mind, have taken the liberty to use them 
very improperly, so as to corrupt the Eng- 
lish language, and to confound things 
which the common understanding of man- 
kind hath always led them to distinguish, 
I shall make some observations on the mean- 
ing of them, that may prevent ambiguity 
or confusion in the use of them. 

6. First, We are never said to perceive 
things, of the existence of which we have 
not a full conviction. I may conceive or 
imagine a mountain of gold, or a winged 
horse ; but no man says that he perceives 
such a creature of imagination. Thus per- 
ception is distinguished from conception or 
imagination. Secondly, Perception is ap- 
plied only to external objects, not to those 
that are in the mind itself. When I am 
pained, I do not say that I perceive pain, 
but that I feel it, or that I am conscious of 
it. Thus, perception is distinguished from 
consciousness. Thirdly, The immediate 
object of perception must be something pre- 
sent, and not what is past. We may re- 
member what is past, but do not perceive 
it. I may say, I perceive such a person 
has had the small-pox ; but this phrase is 
figurative, although the figure is so familiar 
that it is not observed. The meaning of it 
is, that I perceive the pits in his face, which 
are certain signs of his having had the small 
pox. We say we perceive the thing signi- 
fied, when we only perceive the sign. But 
when the word perception is used properly, 
and without any figure, it is never applied 
to things past. And thus it is distinguished 
from remembrance. 

In a word, perception is most properly 
applied to the evidence which we have of 
external objects by our senses. But, as 
this is a [17] very clear and cogent kind of 
evidence, the word is often applied by ana- 
logy to the evidence of reason or of testi- 



• Thought and thinking are used in a more, and in 
a less, restricted signification. In the former mean, 
ing they are limited to the discursive energies alone ; 
in the latter, they are co-extensive with conscious, 
ness.— H. 



ri6-18"l 



mony, when it is clear and cogent. The 
perception of external objects by our senses, 
is an operation of the mind of a peculiar 
nature, and ought to have a name appro- 
priated to it. It has so in all languages. 
And, in English, I know no word more 
proper to express this act of the mind than 
perception. Seeing, hearing, smelling, 
tasting, and touching or feeling, are words 
that express the operations proper to each 
sense; perceiving expresses that which is 
common to them all. 

The observations made on this word 
would have been unnecessary, if it had not 
been so much abused in philosophical 
writings upon the mind ; for, in other writ- 
ings, it bas no obscurity. Although this 
abuse is not chargeable on Mr Hume only, 
yet I think he has carried it to the highest 
pitch. The first sentence of his " Treatise 
of Human Nature" runs thus : — " All the 
perceptions of the human mind resolve 
themselves into two distinct heads, which 
I shall call impressions and ideas." He 
adds, a little after, that, under the name 
of impressions, he comprehends all our 
sensations, passions, and emotions. Here 
we learn that our passions and emotions 
are perceptions. I believe, no English 
writer before him ever gave the name of a 
perception to any passion or emotion. 
When a man is angry, we must say that he 
has the perception of anger. When he is 
in love, that he has the perception of love. 
He speaks often of the perceptions of me- 
mory, and of the perceptions of imagina- 
tion; and he might as well speak of the 
hearing of sight, or of the smelling of touch ; 
for, surely, hearing is not more different 
from sight, or smelling from touch, than 
perceiving is from remembering or imagin- 
ing.* 

7. Consciousness is a word used by 
philosophers, to signify that immediate 
knowledge which we have of our present 
thoughts and purposes, and, in general, of 
all the present operations of our minds. 
Whence we may observe, that conscious- 
ness is only of things present. To apply 
consciousness to things past, which some- 
times [18] is done in popular discourse, is to 
confound consciousness with memory ; and 
all such confusion of words ought to be 
avoided in philosophical discourse. It is 
likewise to be observed, that consciousness 



• In the Cartesian and Lockian philosophies, the 
term Perception was used almost convertibly with 
Consciousness : whatever we could be said to be 
conscious of, that we could be said to perceive. And 
there is nothing in the etymology of the word, or in 
its use by ancient writers, that renders this unexclu. 
sive application of it abusive. In the Leibnitzian 
philosophy, perception and apperception were dis- 
tinguished in a peculiar manner — of which again. 
Reid is right in his own restriction of the term; liut 
he is not warranted in blaming Hume for having used 
it in the wider signification ot his predecessors — H. 



EXPLICATION OF WORDS. 



223 



is only of things in the mind, and not of 
external things. It is improper to say, I 
am conscious of the table which is before 
me. I perceive it, I see it ; but do not say 
I am conscious of it. As that consciousness 
by which we have a knowledge of the opera- 
tions of our own minds, is a different power 
from that by which we perceive external 
objects, and as these different powers have 
different names in our language, and, I 
believe, in all languages, a philosopher 
ought carefully to preserve this distinction, 
and never to confound things so different in 
their nature.* 

8. Conceiving, imagining, and appre- 
hending, are commonly used as synony- 
mous in our language, and signify the same 
thing which the logicians call simple appre- 
hension. This is an operation of the mind 
different from all those we have mentioned. 
Whatever we perceive, whatever we re- 
member, whatever we are conscious of, we 
have a full persuasion or conviction of its 
existence. But we may conceive or imagine 
what has no existence, and what we firmly 
believe to have no existence. What never 
had an existence cannot be remembered ; 
what has no existence at present cannot 
be the object of perception or of conscious- 
ness ; but what never had, nor has any 
existence, may be conceived. Every man 
knows that if is as easy to conceive a winged 
horse, or a centaur, as it is to conceive a horse 
or a man. Let it be observed, therefore, that 
to conceive, to imagine, to apprehend, when 
taken in the proper sense, signify an act of 
the mind which implies no belief or judg- 
ment at all.+ It is an act of the mind by 
which nothing is affirmed or denied, and 
which, therefore, can neither be true nor 
false. 

But there is another and a very different 
meaning of those words, so common and so 
well authorized in language that it cannot 
easily be avoided ; and on that account 
we ought to be the more on our guard, that 
we be not misled by the ambiguity. Po- 
ateness and [19] good-breeding lead men, on 
most occasions, to express their opinions 
with modesty, especially when they differ 
from others whom they ought to respect. 
Therefore, when we would express our 
opinion modestly, instead of saying, " This 
is my opinion," or, " This is my judgment," 
which has the air of dogmaticalness, we say, 
" I conceive it to be thus — I imagine, or ap- 
prehend it to be thus ;" which is understood 
as a modest declaration of our judgment. 
In like manner, when anything is said which 
we take to be impossible, we say, "We can- 

* Reid's degradation of Consciousness into a 
special faculty, (in which he seems to follow Hut- 
cheson, in opposition to other philosophers,) is, in 
every point of view, obnoxious to every possible ob- 
jection. See note H. — H 

t Except of its own ideal reality. — H. 

f 19,201 



not conceive it ;" meaning that we cannot 
believe it. 

Thus we see that the words conceive, 
imagine, apprehend, have two meanings, 
and are used to express two operations of 
the mind, which ought never to be con- 
founded. Sometimes they express simple 
apprehension, which implies no judgment 
at all ; sometimes they express judgment or 
opinion. This ambiguity ought to be at- 
tended to, that we may not impose upon 
ourselves or others in the use of them. The 
ambiguity is indeed remedied, in a great 
measure, by their construction. When 
they are used to express simple apprehen* 
sion, they are followed by a noun in the 
accusative case, which signifies the object 
conceived ; but, when they are used to ex- 
press opinion or judgment, they are com- 
monly followed by a verb, in the infinitive 
mood. " I conceive an Egyptian pyramid." 
This implies no judgment. " I conceive 
the Egyptian pyramids to be the most an- 
cient monuments of human art." This 
implies judgment. When the words are 
used in the last sense, the thing conceived 
must be a proposition, because judgment 
cannot be expressed but by a proposition. 
When they are used in the first sense, the 
thing conceived may be no proposition, but 
a simple term only — as a pyramid, an obe- 
lisk. Yet it may be observed, that even a 
proposition may be simply apprehended, 
without forming any judgment of its truth 
or falsehood : for it is one thing to conceive 
the meaning of a proposition ; it is another 
thing to judge it to be true or false. [20] 

Although the distinction between simple 
apprehension, and every degree of assent or 
judgment, be perfectly evident to every man 
who reflects attentively on what passes in 
his own mind— although it is very neces- 
sary, in treating of the powers of the mind, 
to attend carefully to this distinction — yet, 
in the affairs of common life, it is seldom 
neoessary to observe it accurately. On 
this account we shall find, in all common 
languages, the words which express one oi 
those operations frequently applied to the 
other. To think, to suppose, to imagine, 
to conceive, to apprehend, are the words we 
use to express simple apprehension ; but 
they are all frequently used to express 
judgment. Their ambiguity seldom occa- 
sions any inconvenience in the common 
affairs of life, for which language is framed. 
But it has perplexed philosophers, in treat- 
ing of the operations of the mind, and will 
always perplex them, if they do not attend 
accurately to the different meanings which 
are put upon those words on different oc- 
casions. 

9. Most of the operations of the mind, 
from their very nature, must have objects 
to which they are directed, and about which 



224 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay I. 



they are employed. He that perceives, 
must perceive something ; and that which 
he perceives is called the object of his per- 
ception. To perceive, without having any 
object of perception, is impossible. The 
miud that perceives, the object perceived, 
und the operation of perceiving that object, 
are distinct things, and are distinguished in 
the structure of all languages. In this 
sentence, " I see, or perceive the moon," 
/ is the person or mind, the active verb 
see denotes the operation of that mind, and 
the moon denotes the object. What we 
have said of perceiving, is equally applicable 
to most operations of the mind. Such opera- 
tions are, in all languages, expressed by 
active transitive verbs ; and we know that, 
in all languages, such verbs require a thing 
or person, which is the agent, and a noun 
following in an oblique case, which is the 
object. Whence it is evident, that all 
mankind, both those who have contrived 
language, and those who use it with under- 
standing, have distinguished these three 
things as different — to wit, the operations of 
the mind, which [21] are expressed by active 
verbs ; the mind itself, which is the nomin- 
ative to those verbs ; and the object, which 
is, in the oblique case, governed by them. 

It would have been unnecessary to ex- 
plain so obvious a distinction, if some sys- 
tems of philosophy had not confounded it. 
Mr Hume's system, in particular, confounds 
all distinction between the operations of the 
mind and their objects. When he speaks 
of the ideas of memory, the ideas of imagin- 
ation, and the ideas of sense, it is often im- 
possible, from the tenor of his discourse, to 
know whether, by those ideas, he means 
the operations of the mind, or the objects 
about which they are employed. And, 
indeed, according to his system, there is 
no distinction between the one and the 
other. 

A philosopher is, no doubt, entitled to 
examine even those distinctions that are to 
be found in the structure of all languages ; 
and, if he is able to shew that there is no 
foundation for them in the nature of the 
things distinguished — if he can point out 
some prejudice common to mankind which 
has led them to distinguish things that are 
not really different — in that case, such a 
distinction may be imputed to a vulgar 
error, which ought to be corrected in philo- 
sophy. But when, in his first setting out, 
he takes it for granted, without proof, that 
distinctions found in the structure of all 
languages, have no foundation in nature, 
this, surely, is too fastidious a way of 
treating the common sense of mankind. 
When we come to be instructed by philo- 
sophers, we must bring the old light of 
common sense along with us, and by it 
judge of the new light which the philo- 
[21 23] 



sopher communicates to us. But when we 
are required to put out the old light alto- 
gether, that we may follow the new, we 
have reason to be on our guard. There 
may be distinctions that have a real foun- 
dation, and which may be necessary in 
philosophy, which are not made in common 
language, because not necessary in the com- 
mon business of life. But I believe [22] no 
instance will be found of a distinction made 
in all languages, which has not a just found- 
ation in nature. 

10. The word idea* occurs so frequently 
in modern philosophical writings upon the 
mind, and is so ambiguous in its meaning, 
that it is"necessary to make some observa- 
tions upon it. There are chiefly two mean- 
ings of this word in modern authors — a 
popular and a philosophical. 

First, In popular language, idea signi- 
fies the same thing as conception, appre- 
hension, notion. To have an idea of any- 
thing, is to conceive it. To have a distinct 
idea, is to conceive it distinctly. To have 
no idea of it, is not to conceive it at all. 
It was before observed, that conceiving or 
apprehending has always been considered 
by all men as an act or operation of the 
mind, and, on that account, has been ex- 
pressed in all languages by an active verb. 
When, therefore, we use the phrase of 
having ideas, in .the popular sense, we 
ought to attend to this, that it signifies 
precisely the same thing which we com- 
monly express by the active verbs, conceiv- 
ing or apprehending. 

When the word idea is taken in this po- 
pular sense, no man can possibly doubt 
whether he has ideas. For he that doubts 
must think, and to think is to have ideas. 

Sometimes, in popular language, a man's 
ideas signify his opinions. The ideas of 
Aristotle, or of Epicurus, signify the 
opinions of these philosophers. What was 
formerly said of the words imagine, conceive, 
apprehend, that they are sometimes used 
to express judgment, is no less true of the 
word idea. This signification of the word 
seems indeed more common in the French 
language than in English. But it is found 
in this sense in good English authors, and 
even in Mr Locke. Thus we see, that 
having ideas, taken in the popular sense, 
has precisely the same meaning with conceiv- 
ing, imagining, apprehending, and has like- 
wise [23] the same ambiguity. It may, there- 
fore, be doubted, whether the introduction of 
this word into popular discourse, to signify the 
operation of conceiving or apprehending, 
was at all necessary. For, first, We have, 
as has been shewn, several words which are 
either originally English, or have been long 
naturalized, that express the same thing ; 



• On the history of the term Idea, see NorefJ. 



CHAP. I.] 



EXPLICATION OF WORDS. 



225 



why, therefore, should we adopt a Greek 
word, in place of these, any more than a 
French or a German word ? Besides, the 
words of our own lauguage are less ambi- 
guous. For the word idea has, for many 
ages, been used by philosophers as a term 
of art ; and in the different systems of phi- 
losophers means very different things. 

Secondly, According to the philosophi- 
cal meaning of the word idea, it does not 
signify that act of the mind which we call 
thought or conception, but some object of 
thought. Ideas, according to Mr Locke, 
(whose very frequent use of this word has 
probably been the occasion of its being 
adopted into common language,) " are 
nothing but the immediate objects of the 
mind in thinking." But of those objects of 
thought called ideas, different sects of phi- 
losophers have given a very different ac- 
count. Bruckerus, a learned German, wrote 
a whole book, giving the history of ideas. 

The most ancient system we have con- 
cerning ideas, is that which is explained in 
several dialogues of Plato, and which many 
ancient, as Avell as modern writers, have 
ascribed to Plato, as the inventor. But it is 
certain that Plato had his doctrine upon 
this subject, as well as the name idea, from 
the school of Pythagoras. We have still 
extant, a tract of Timaeus, the Locrian, a 
Pythagorean philosopher, concerning the 
soul of the world, in which we find the sub- 
stance of Plato's doctrine concerning ideas.* 
They were held to be eternal, uncreated, 
and immutable forms, or models, according 
to which the Deity made every species of 
things that exists, of an eternal matter. 
Those philosophers held, that there are 
three first principles of all things : First, 
An eternal matter, of which all things were 
made ; Secondly, Eternal and immaterial 
forms, or ideas, according to which they were 
made; and, [24] Thirdly, An efficient cause, 
the Deity who made them.-j- The mind of 
man, in order to its being fitted for the con- 
templation of these eternal ideas, must un- 
dergo a certain purification, and be weaned 
from sensible things. The eternal ideas are 
the only object of science; because the ob- 
jects of sense, being in a perpetual flux, there 
can be no real knowledge with regard to them. 

The philosophers of the Alexandrian 
school, commonly called the latter Plalo- 
nisls, made some change upon the system of 
the ancient Platonists with respect to the 
eternal ideas. They held them not to be a 
principle distinct from the Deity, but to be 
the conceptions of things in the divine un- 

The whole series of Pythagorean treatises and 
I fragments in the Doric dialect, ill which the doc- 
itrines and phraseology of Plato-and Aristotle are so 
i marvellously anticipated, are now proved to be com. 
paratively recent forgeries. Of these, the treatise 
under the name of Timaeus, is one. — H. 

t See above, p. 204, a, note * — H. 
|;[24, 25] 



derstanding ; the natures and essences of all 
things being perfectly known to him from 
eternity. 

It ought to be observed that the Pythago- 
reans, and the Platonists, whether elder or 
latter, made the eternal'ideas to be objects 
of science only, and of abstract contempla- 
tion, not the objects of sense.* And in 
this, the ancient system of eternal ideas 
differs from the modern one of Father Ma- 
lebranche. He held, in common with other 
modern philosophers, that no external 
thing is perceived by us immediately, but 
only by ideas. But he thought that the 
ideas, by which we perceive an external 
world, are the ideas of the Deity himself, 
in whose mind the ideas of all things, past, 
present, and future, must have been from 
eternity; for the Deity being intimately 
present to our minds at all times, may dis- 
cover to us as much of his ideas as he sees 
proper, according to certain established 
laws of nature ; and in his ideas, as in a 
mirror, we perceive whatever we do per- 
ceive of the external world. 

Thus we have three systems, which main- 
tain that the ideas which ai*e the imme- 
diate objects of human knowledge, are 
eternal and immutable, and existed before 
the things which they represent. There 
are other systems, according to which the 
ideas which are the immediate objects of 
all our thoughts, are posterior to the things 
which they represent, and derived from 
them, We shall [25] give some account of 
these ; but, as they have gradually sprung 
out of the ancient Peripatetic system, it is 
necessary to begin with some account of it. 

Aristotle taught that all the objects of 
our thought enter at first by the senses ; 
and, since the sense cannot receive external 
material objects themselves, it receives their 
species — that is, their images or forms, 
without the matter ; as wax receives the form 
of the seal without any of the matter of it. 
These images or forms, impressed upon the 
senses, are called sensible species, and are 
the objects only of the sensitive part of the 
mind ; but, by various internal powers, they 
are retained, refined, and spiritualized, so as 
to become objects of memory and imagina- 
tion, and, at last, of pure intellection. 
When they are objects of memory and of 
imagination, they get the name-of phantasms. 
When, by farther refinement, and being 
stripped of their particularities, they become 
objects of science, they are called intelli- 
gible species : so that every immediate 

* Reid, in common with our philosophers in general, 
had no knowledge of the Platonic theory of sensible 
perceiilion; and yet the gnostic forms, the cognitive 
reasons of the Platonists, held a far more proximate 
relation to ideas in the modern acceptation, than the 
Platon c ideas themselves. These, in fact, as to all 
that relates to the c'octrine of perception and ima- 
gination, may be thrown wholly out of account. See 
below, under p. Ufi.— H. 

Q 



226 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay I. 



object, whether of sense, of memory, of 
imagination, or of reasoning, must he some 
phantasm or species in the mind itself.* 

The followers of Aristotle, especially the 
schoolmen, made great additions to this 
theory, which the author himself mentions 
very briefly, and with an appearance of 
reserve. They entered into large disquisi- 
tions with regard to the sensible species : 
what kind of things they are ; how they 
are sent forth by the object, and enter by 
the organs of the senses ; how they are 
preserved and refined by various agents, 
called internal senses, concerning the num- 
ber and offices of which they had many 
controversies. But we shall not enter into 
a detail of these matters. 

The reason of giving this brief account of 
the theory of the Peripatetics, with regard to 
the immediate objects of our thoughts, is, 
because the doctrine of modern philoso- 
phers concerning ideas is built upon it. Mr 
Locke, who uses this word so very fre- 
quently, tells us, that he means the same thing 
by it as is commonly [26] meant by species 
or phantasm. Gassendi, from whom Locke 
borrowed more than from any other author, 
says the same. The words species and 
phantasm, are terms of art in the Peripa- 
tetic system, and the meaning of them is to 
be learned from it.-f- 

The theory of Democritus and Epicurus, 
on this subject, was not very unlike to that 
of the Peripatetics. They held that all 
bodies continually send forth slender films 
or spectres from their surface, of such 
extreme subtilty that they easily penetrate 
our gross bodies, or enter by the organs of 
sense, and stamp their image upon the 
mind. The sensible species of Aristotle 
were mere forms without matter. The 
spectres of Epicurus were composed of a 
very subtile matter. 

Modern philosophers, as well as the Peri- 
patetics and Epicureans of old, have con- 
ceived that external objects cannot be the 
immediate objects of our thought ; that 
there must be some image of them in the 
mind itself, in which, as in a mirror, they 
are seen. And the name idea, in the philo- 
sophical sense of it, is given to those inter- 
nal and immediate objects of our thoughts. 
The external thing is the remote or mediate 
object ; but the idea, or image of that object 
in the mind, is the immediate object, without 

* This is a tolerable account of the doctrine 
vulgarly attributed to Aristotle.— H. 

* If by this it be meant that the terms of species 
and phantasm, as occasionally employed by Gassendi 
and Locke, are used by them in the common mean- 
ing attache I to them in the Schools, Reid is wrong. 
Gassendi, no more than Des Cartes, In adopting 
these terms of the I'eripatetics, adopted them in 
their Peripatetic signification. Both these philoso- 
phers are explicit ;n declaring the contrary ; and 
what these terms as employed by them denote, they 
have clearly stated. Locke is less precise. — H. 



which we could have no perception, no re- 
membrance, no conception of the mediate 
object.* 

When, therefore, in common language, 
we speak of having an idea of anything, we 
mean no more by that expression, but 
thinking of it. The vulgar allow that this 
expression implies a mind that thinks, an 
act of that mind which we call thinking, 
and an object about which we think. But, 
besides these three, the philosopher con- 
ceives that there is a fourth — to wit, the 
idea, which is the immediate object. The 
idea is in the mind itself, and can have no 
existence but in a mind that thinks ; but the 
remote or mediate object may be something 
external, as the sun or moon ; it may be 
something past or future ; it may be some- 
thing which never existed. [27] This is 
the philosophical meaning of the word idea ; 
and we may observe that this meaning of 
that word is built upon a philosophical 
opinion : for, if philosophers had not be- 
lieved that there are such immediate objects 
of all our thoughts in the mind, they would 
never have used the word idea to express 
them. 

I shall only add, on this article, that, al- 
though I may have occasion to use the word 
idea in this philosophical sense in explaining 
the opinions of others, I shall have no occa- 
sion to use it in expressing my own, because 
I believe ideas, taken in this sense, to be 
a mere fiction of philosophers. And, in the 
popular meaning of the word, there is the 
less occasion to use it, because the English 
words thought, notion, apprehension, answer 
the purpose as well as the Greek word 
idea; with this advantage, that they are 
less ambiguous. There is, indeed, a mean- 
ing of the word idea, which I think most 
agreeable to its use in ancient philosophy, 
and which I would willingly adopt, if use, 
the arbiter of language, did permit. But 
this will come to be explained afterwards. 

11. The word impression is used by Mr 
Hume, in speaking of the operations of the 
mind, almost as often as the word idea is 
by Mr Locke. "What the latter calls ideas, 
the former divides into two classes ; one of 
which he calls impressions, the other ideas. 
I shall make some observations upon Mr 
Hume's explication of that word, and then 
consider the proper meaning of it in the 
English language. 

" We may divide," (says Mr Hume, 
K Essays," vol. II., p. 18,-f) " all the percep- 
tions of the human mind into two classes 
or species, which are distinguished by their 

* On Reid's ambiguous employment of the ex. 
pressions mediate and immediate ohject, see No'e 
B ■ and, on Ms confusion of the two hypotheses of 
representation, Note C — H. 

t " Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, *" 
$ 2. The quotation has been filled up by the origi- 
nal. — H. 

[26, 2?1 



CHAP. I.] 



EXPLICATION OF WORDS. 



22' 



differeut degrees of force and vivacity. The 
less lively and forcible are commonly deno- 
minated thoughts or ideas. The other 
species want a name in our language, and 
in most others ; [I suppose because it was 
not requisite for any but philosophical pur- 
poses to rank them under a general term 
or appellation.] Let us, therefore, use a 
little freedom, and call them impressions ; 
[employing that word in a sense somewhat 
different from the usual.] By the term 
impression, then, I mean all our more lively 
perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, 
or love, or hate, or desire, or will. [And 
impressions are distinguished from] ideas 
[which] are the [28] less lively perceptions, 
of which we are conscious, when we reflect on 
any of those sensations or movements above 
mentioned." 

This is the explication Mr Hume hath 
given in his " Essays" of the term impres- 
sions, when applied to the mind: and his 
explication of it, in his " Treatise of Human 
Nature," is to the same purpose. [Vol. I. 
p. 11.] 

Disputes about words belong rather to 
grammarians than to philosophers ; but 
philosophers ought not to escape censure 
when they corrupt a language, by using 
words in a way which the purity of the lan- 
guage will not admit. I find fault with Mr 
Hume's phraseology in the words I have 
quoted — 

First, Because he gives the name of per- 
ceptions to every operation of the mind. 
Love is a perception, hatred a perception ; 
desire is a perception, will is a perception ; 
and, by the same rule, a doubt, a question, 
a command, is a perception. This is an 
intolerable abuse of language, which no phi- 
losopher has authority to introduce.* 

Secondly, When Mr Hume says, that we 
may divide all the perceptions of the human 
mind into two classes or species, which are 
distinguished ly their degrees of force and 
vivacity, the manner of expression is loose 
and unphilosophical. To differ in species 
is one thing; to differ in degree is an- 
other. Things which differ in degree only 
must be of the same species. It is a 
maxim of common sense, admitted by all 
men, that greater and less do not make 
a change of species.-]- The same man 
may differ in the degree of his force and 
vivacity, in the morning and at night, in 
health and in sickness ; but this is so far 
from making him a different species, that 
it does not so much as make him a dif- 
ferent individual. To say, therefore, that 
two different classes, or species of percep- 

* Hume did not introduce it The teim Percep- 
tion was so used by Des Can es and many others ; and, 
asdesires, feelings, &c. exist only as known, so are they 
all, in a certain sense, cognitions (perceptions.)— H. 

t " Rlagis et minus non variant speciem."— H. 
[2$, 29] 



tions, are distinguished by the degrees of 
their force and vivacity, is to confound a 
difference of degree with a difference of 
species, which every man of understanding 
knows how to distinguish.* [29] 

Thirdly, We may observe, that this 
author, having given the general name of 
perception to all the operations of the 
mind,-j- and distinguished them into two 
classes or species, which differ only in de- 
gree of force and vivacity, tells us/that he 
gives the name of impressions to all our 
more lively perceptions— to wit, when Ave 
hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or 
desire, or will. There is great confusion 
in this account of the meaning of the word 
impression. When I see, this is an im- 
piessun. But why has not the author 
told us whether he gives the name of im- 
pression to the object seen, or to that act of 
my mind by which I see it ? When I see 
the full moon, the full moon is one thing, 
my perceiving it is another thing. Which 
of these two things does he call an impres- 
sion ? We are left to guess this ; nor does 
all that this author writes about impressions 
clear this point. Everything he says tends 
to darken it, and to lead us to think that the 
full moon which I see, and my seeing it, are 
not two things, but one and the same thing.J 
The same observation may be applied to 
every other instance the author gives to 
illustrate the meaning of the word impres- 
sion. " When we hear, when we feel, 
when we love, when Ave hate, Avhen Ave de- 
sire, when we will." In all these acts of 
the mind there must be an object, which is 
heard, or felt, or loved, or hated, or desired, 
or Avilled. Thus, for instance, I love my 
country. This, says Mr Hume, is an im- 
pression. But Avhat is the impression f Is it 
my country, or is it the affection I bear to it ? 
I ask the philosopher this question ; but I 
find no ansAver to it. And when I read all 



* This objection reaches far more extensively than 
to Hume ; in fact, to all who do not allow an imme- 
diate knowledge or consciousness of the t.on-ego in 
perception. Where are the philosophers who lo? — 
Aristotle and Hobbes call imagination a dying sense; 
and Des Cartes is equally explicit. — H. 

t As others previously had done.— H. 

% This objection is easily answered. The thing, 
(Hume would say,) as unknown, as unperceived, as 
beyond the sphere of my consciousness, is to me as 
zero; to that, therefore, I could not refer, Asper- 
ceived, as known, it mu>t be within the sphere oj my 
consciousness ; but, as philosophers concur in main- 
taining that 1 can only be conscious of my mind and 
its contents, the object, as perceived, mu*t be either 
a mode of, or something contained within my mind, 
and to that internal object, as perceived, 1 give the 
name of impression. — Nor can the act of perception 
(he would add) be really distinguished from the ob- 
ject perceived. Both are only relatives, mutually 
constituent of the same indivisible relation of know- 
ledge ; and to that relation and these relatives- 1 give 
the name of impression, precisely as, in different 
points cf view, the term perception is applied to the 
mind perceiving, to the object perceived, and. to the 
act of which these are the ii. separable constituents. 
— T his likewise has reference to what follows.— H. 



228 



ON- THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay I- 



that he has written on this subject, I find 
this word impression sometimes used to sig- 
nify an operation of the mind, sometimes 
the object of the operation ; but, for the 
most part, it is a vague and indetermined 
word that signifies both. 

I know not whether it may be considered 
as an apology for such abuse of words, in an 
author who understood the language so well, 
and used it with so great propriety in writ- 
ing on other subjects, [30] that Mr Hume's 
system, with regard to the mind, required a 
language of a different structure from the 
common : or, if expressed in plain English, 
would have been too shocking to the com- 
mon sense of mankind. To give an instance 
or two of this. If a man receives a present 
on which he puts a high value, if he see 
and handle it, and put it in his pocket, this, 
says Mr Hume, is an impression. If the 
man only dream that he received such a 
present, this is an idea. Wherein lies the 
difference between this impression and this 
idea — between the dream and the reality ? 
They are different classes or species, says 
Mr Hume : so far all men will agree with 
him. But he adds, that they are distinguished 
only by different degrees of force and viva- 
city. Here he insinuates a tenet of his 
own, in contradiction to the commonsense 
of mankind. Common sense convinces every 
man, that a lively dream is no nearer to a 
reality than a faint one ; and that, if a man 
should dream that he had all the wealth of 
Croesus, it would not put one farthing in 
his pocket. It is impossible to fabricate ar- 
guments against such undeniable principles, 
without confounding the meaning of words. 

In like manner, if a man would persuade 
me that the moon which I see, and my see- 
ing it, are not two things, but one and the 
same thing, he will answer his purpose less 
by arguing this point in plain English, than 
by confounding the two under one name — 
such as that of an impression. For such is 
the power of words, that, if we can be 
brought to the habit of calling two things 
that are connected by the same name, we are 
the more easily led to believe them to be 
one and the same thing. 

Let us next consider the proper meaning 
of the word impression* in English, that we 
may see how far it is fit to express either 
the operations of the mind or their objects. 

When a figure is stamped upon a body by 
pressure, that figure is called an impression, 
as the impression of a seal on wax, of [31] 
printing-types, or of a copperplate on paper- 
This seems now to be the literal sense of 
the word ; the effect borrowing its name 
from the cause. But, by metaphor or ana- 
logy, like most other words, its meaning is 
extended, so as to signify any change pro- 

*• See below, under' p. 338.— H. 



duced in a body by the operation of some 
external cause. A blow of the hand makes 
no impression on a stone wall ; but a bat- 
tery of cannon may. The moon raises a 
tide in the ocean, but makes no impression 
on rivers and lakes. 

When we speak of making an impression 
on the mind, the word is carried still farther 
from its literal meaning ; use, however, 
which is the arbiter of language, authorizes 
this application of it — as when we say that 
admonition and reproof make little impres- 
sion on those who are confirmed in bad 
habits. The same discourse delivered in 
one way makes a strong impression on the 
hearers ; delivered in another way, it makes 
no impression at all. 

It may be observed that, in such ex- 
amples, an impression made on the mind 
always implies some change of purpose or 
will ; some new habit produced, or some 
former habit weakened ; some passion raised 
or allayed. When such changes are pro- 
duced by persuasion, example, or any ex- 
ternal cause, we say that such causes make 
an impression upon the mind ; but, when 
things are seen, or heard, or apprehended, 
without producing any passion or emotion, 
we say that they make no impression. 

In the most extensive sense, an impres- 
sion is a change produced in some passive 
subject by the operation of an external 
cause. If we suppose an active being to 
produce any change in itself by its own 
active power, this is never called an im- 
pression. It is the act or operation of 
the being itself, not an impression upon it. 
From this it appears, that to give the name 
of an impression to any effect produced in 
the mind, is to suppose that the mind does 
not act at all in the production of that effect. 
If seeing, hearing, desiring, willing, be 
operations of the mind, they cannot be im- 
pressions. If [32] they be impressions, they 
cannot be operations of the mind. In the 
structure of all languages, they are con- 
sidered as acts or operations of the mind it- 
self, and the names given them imply this. 
To call them impressions, therefore, is to 
trespass against the structure, not of a par- 
ticular language only, but of all languages.* 

If the word impression be an improper 
word to signify the operations of the mind, 
it is at least as improper to signify their 
objects ; for would any man be thought to 
speak with propriety, who should say that 
the sun is an impression, that the earth and 
the sea are impressions ? 

It is commonly believed, and taken for 
granted, that every language, if it be suffi- 
ciently copious in words, is equally fit to 
express all opinions, whether they be true 



h I- 



But see Scaligcr, " De Subtilitate," Exerc. 295, 



[30-32] 



I.] 



EXPLICATION OF WORDS. 



229 



or false. I apprehend, however, that there 
is an exception to this general rule, which 
deserves our notice. There are certain 
common opinions of mankind, upon which 
the structure and grammar of all languages 
are founded. While these opinions are 
common to all men, there will be a great 
similarity in all languages that are to be 
found on the face of the earth. Such a 
similarity there really is ; for we find in all 
languages the same parts of speech, the 
distinction of nouns and verbs, the distinc- 
tion of nouns into adjective and substan- 
tive, of verbs into active and passive. In 
verbs we find like tenses, moods, persons, 
and numbers. There are general rules of 
grammar, the same in all languages. This 
similarity of structure in all languages, 
shews an uniformity among men in those 
opinions upon which the structure of lan- 
guage is founded. 

If, for instance, we should suppose that 
there was a nation who believed that the 
things which we call attributes might exist 
without a subject, there would be in their 
language no distinction between adjectives 
and substantives, nor would it be a rule 
with them that an adjective has no mean- 
ing, unless when joined to a substantive. 
If there was any nation who did not dis- 
tinguish between [33] acting and being acted 
upon, there would in their language be no 
distinction between active and passive 
verbs ; nor would it be a rule that the 
active verb must have an agent in the 
nominative case, but that, in the passive 
verb, the agent must be in an oblique case. 

The structure of all languages is grounded 
upon common notions, which Mr Hume's 
philosophy opposes, and endeavours to 
overturn. This, no doubt, led him to warp 
the common language into a conformity with 
his principles ; but we ought not to imitate 
him in this, until we are satisfied that his 
principles are built on a solid foundation. 

12. Sensation is a name given by philo- 
sophers to an act of mind, which may be 
distinguished from all others by this, that 
it hath no object distinct from the act itself.* 
Pain of every kind is an uneasy sensation. 
When I am pained, I cannot say that the 
pain I feel is one thing, and that my feeling 
it is another thing. They are one and the 
same thing, and cannot be disjoined, even 
in imagination. Pain, when it is not felt, 
has no existence. It can be neither greater 
nor less in degree or duration, nor anything 
else in kind than it is felt to be. It cannot 
exist by itself, nor in any subject but in a 
sentient being. No quality of an inanimate 

* But sensation, in the language of philosophers, 
has been generallv employed to denote the whole pro- 
cess of sensitive.cognition, including both perception 
iroper and sensation proper. On this distinction, 
see below, Essay II., ch. xvi., and Note D.*— H. 
[33, 34.] 



insentient being can have the least resem- 
blance to it. 

What we have said of pain may be 
applied to every other sensation. Some of 
them are agreeable, others uneasy, in 
various degrees. These being objects of 
desire or aversion, have some attention 
given to them ; but many are indifferent, 
and so little attended to that they have no 
name in any language. 

Most operations of the mind that have 
names in common language, are complex 
in their nature, and made up of various 
ingredients, or more simple acts ; which, 
though conjoined in our constitution, must 
be disjoined by abstraction, in order to our 
having a distinct and scientific notion of the 
complex operation. [34] In such operations, 
sensation, for the most part, makes an in- 
gredient. Those who do not attend to the 
complex nature of such operations, are apt 
to resolve them into some one of the simple 
acts of which they are compounded, over- 
looking the others. And from this cause 
many disputes have been raised, and many 
errors have been occasioned with regard to 
the nature of such operations. 

The perception of external objects' is 
accompanied with some sensation corre- 
sponding to the object perceived, and such 
sensations have, in many cases, in all lan- 
guages, the same name with the external 
object which they always accompany. The 
difficulty of disjoining, by abstraction, things 
thus constantly conjoined in the course of 
nature, and things which have one and the 
same name in all languages, has likewise 
been frequently an occasion of errors in the 
philosophy of the mind. To avoid such 
errors, nothing is of more importance than 
to have a distinct notion of that simple 
act of the mind which we call sensation, and 
which we have endeavoured to describe. 
By this means, we shall find it more easy to 
distinguish it from every external object that 
it accompanies, and from every other act of 
the mind that may be conjoined with it. 
For this purpose, it is likewise of import- 
ance that the name of sensation should, in 
philosophical writings, be appropriated to 
signify this simple act of the mind, without 
including anything more in its signification, 
or being applied to other purposes. 

I shall add an observation concerning the 
word fpelinp. This word has two meanings. 
First, it signifies the perceptions we have of 
external objects, by the sense of touch. 
When we speak of feeling a body to be hard 
or soft, rough or smooth, hot or cold, to 
feel these things is to perceive them by 
touch. They are external things, and that 
act of the mind by which we feel them is 
easily distinguished from the objects felt. 
Secondly, the word feeling is used to signify 
the same thing as sensation, which we have 



230 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 1. 



just now explained ; and, in this sense, it 
has no object ; the feeling and the thing 
felt are one and the same. [35 J 

Perhaps betwixt feeling, taken in this 
last sense, and sensation, there may be this 
small difference, that sensation is most com- 
monly used to signify those feelings which 
we have by our external senses and bodily 
appetites, and all our bodily pains and 
pleasures. But there are feelings of a 
nobler nature accompanying our affections, 
our moral judgments, and our determina- 
tions in matters of taste, to which the word 
sensation is less properly applied. 

I have premised these observations on 
the meaning of certain words that frequently 
occur in treating of this subject, lor two 
reasons : First, That I may be the better 
understood when I use them; and, Secondly, 
That those who would make any progress 
in this branch of science, may accustom 
themselves to attend very carefully to the 
meaning of words that are used hi it. They 
may be assured of this, that the ambiguity 
of words, and the vague and improper appli- 
cation of them, have thrown more darkness 
upon this subject than the subtilty and 
intricaey of things. 

When we use common words, we ought 
to use them in the sense in which they are 
most commonly used by the best and purest 
writers in the language ; and, when we have 
occasion to enlarge or restrict the meaning 
of a common word, or give it more precision 
than it has in common language, the reader 
ought to have warning of this, otherwise we 
shall impose upon ourselves and upon him. 

A very respectable writer has given a 
good example of this kind, by explaining, 
in an Appendix to his : ' Elements of Criti- 
cism," the terms he has occasion to use. 
In that Appendix, most of the words are 
explained on which I have been making 
observations ; and the explication I have 
given, I think, agrees, for the most part, 
with his. 

Other words that need explication, shall 
be explaiued as they occur. [36] 



CHAPTER II. 

PRINCIPLES TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 

As there are words common to philosophers 
and to the vulgar, which need no explica- 
tion, so there are principles common to both, 
which need no proof, and which do not 
admit of direct proof. 

One who applies to any branch of science, 
must be come to years of understanding, 
and, consequently, must have exercised his 
reason, and the other powers of his mind, 
in various ways. He must have formed 
various opinions and principles, by which he 



conducts himself in the affairs of life. Of 
those principles, some are common to ail 
men, being evident in themselves, and so 
necessary in the conduct of life that a man 
cannot live and act according to the rules 
of common prudence without them. 

All men that have common understand- 
ing, agree in such principles ; and consider 
a man as lunatic or destitute of common 
sense, who denies or calls them in question. 
Thus, if any man were found of so strange 
a turn as not to believe his own eyes, to 
put no trust in his senses, nor have the 
least regard to their testimony, would any 
man think it worth while to reason gravely 
with such a person, and, by argument, to 
convince him of his error ? Surely no wise 
man would. For, before men can reason 
together, they must agree in first principles ; 
and it is impossible to reason with a man 
who has no principles in common with you. 

There are, therefore, common principles, 
which are the foundation of all reasoning 
and of all science. Such common principles 
seldom admit of direct proof, nor do they 
need it. Men need not to be taught them ; 
for they are such as all men of [37] com- 
mon understanding know; or such, at least, 
as they give a ready assent to, as soon as 
they are proposed and understood. 

Such principles, when we have occasion 
to use them in science, are called axiotns. 
And, although it be not absolutely neces- 
sary, yet it may be of great use, to point 
cut the principles or axioms on which a 
science is grounded. 

Thus, mathematicians, before they prove 
any of the propositions of mathematics, lay 
down certain axioms, or common princi- 
ples, upon which they build their reason- 
ings. And although those axioms be truths 
which every man knew before — such as, 
That the whole is greater than a part, That 
equal quantities added to equal quantities 
make equal sums ; yet, when we see no- 
thing assumed in the proof of mathematical 
propositions, but such self-evident axioms, 
the propositions appear more certain, and 
leave no room for doubt or dispute. 

In all other sciences, as well as in mathe- 
matics, it will be found that there are a 
few common principles, upon which all the 
reasonings in that science are grounded, 
and into which they may be resolved. If 
these were pointed out and considered, we 
should be bet ter able to j udge what stress may 
be laid upon the conclusions in that science. 
If the principles be certain, the conclusions 
justly drawn from them must be certain. 
If the principles be only probable, the con- 
clusions can only be probable. If the prin- 
ciples be false, dubious, or obscure, the 
superstructure that is built upon them 
must partake of the weakness of the found- 
ation. 

[33-37] 



CHAP. II. ] 



PRINCIPLES TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 



231 



Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest of na- 
tural philosophers, has given an example 
well worthy of imitation, by laying down 
the common principles or axioms, on which 
the reasonings in natural philosophy are 
built. Before this was done, the reason- 
ings of philosophers in that science were 
as vague and uncertain as they are in 
most others. Nothing was fixed ; all was 
dispute and controversy; [38] but, by 
this happy expedient, a solid foundation 
is laid in that science, and a noble super- 
structure is raised upon it, about which 
there is now no more dispute or con- 
troversy among men of knowledge, than 
there is about the conclusions of mathe- 
matics. 

It may, however be observed, that the 
first principles of natural philosophy are of 
a quite different nature from mathematical 
axioms : they have not the same kind of 
evidence, nor are they necessary truths, as 
mathematical axioms are. They are such as 
these : That similar effects proceed from the 
same or similar causes ; That we ought to 
admit of no other causes of natural effects, 
but such as are true, and sufficient to ac- 
count for the effects. These are principles 
which, though tbey ha ve not the same kind of 
evidence that mathematical axioms have ; 
yet have such evidence that every man of 
common understanding readily assents to 
them, and finds it absolutely necessary to 
conduct his actions and opinions by them, 
in the ordinary affairs of life. 

Though it has not been usual, yet I con- 
ceive it may be useful, to point out some of 
those things which I shall take for granted, 
as first principles, in treating of the mind 
and its faculties. There is the more oc- 
casion for this ; because very ingenious 
men, such as Des Cartes, Malebranche, 
Arnauld, Locke, and many others, have 
lost much labour, by not distinguishing 
things which require proof, from things 
which, though they may admit of illustra- 
tration, yet, being self-evident, do not admit 
of proof. When men attempt to deduce 
such self-evident principles from others 
more evident, they always fall into incon- 
clusive reasoning : and the consequence of 
this has been, that others, such as Berkeley 
and Hume, finding the arguments brought 
to prove such first principles to be weak 
and inconclusive, have been tempted first 
to doubt of them, and afterwards to deny 
them. 

It is so irksome to reason with those who 
deny first principles, that wise men com- 
monly decline it. Yet it is not impossible, 
that [39] what is only a vulgar prejudice 
may be mistaken for a first principle. Nor 
is it impossible that what is really a first 
principle may, by the enchantment of words, 
have such a mist thrown about it, as to 
T38-401 



hide its evidence, and to make a man of 
candour doubt of it. Such cases happen 
more frequently, perhaps, in this science 
than in any other ; but they are not alto- 
gether without remedy. There are ways 
by which the evidence of first principles 
may be made more apparent when they are 
brought into dispute ; but they require to 
be handled in a way peculiar to themselves. 
Their evidence is not demonstrative, but 
intuitive. They require not proof, but to 
be placed in a proper point of view. This 
will be shewn more fully in its proper place, 
and applied to those very principles which 
we now assume. In the meantime, when 
they are proposed as first principles, the 
reader is put on his guard, and warned to 
consider whether they have a just claim to 
that character. 

1. First, then, I shall take it for granted, 
that I think, that I remember, that I rea- 
son, and, in general, that I really perform 
all those operations of mind of which I am 
conscious. 

The operations of our minds are attended 
with consciousness ; and this consciousness 
is the evidence, the only evidence, which 
we have or can have of their existence. If 
a man should take it into his head to think 
or to say that his consciousness may de- 
ceive him, and to require proof that it can- 
not, I know of no proof that can be given 
him ; he must be left to himself, as a man 
that denies first principles, without which 
there can be no reasoning. Every man 
finds himself under a necessity of believing 
what consciousness testifies, and everything 
that hath this testimony is to be taken as a 
first principle.* 

2. As by consciousness we know cer- 
tainly the existence of our present thoughts 
and passions ; so we know the past by re- 
membrance. + And, when they are re- 
cent, and the remembrance of them fresh, 
[40] the knowledge of them, from such 
distinct remembrance, is, in its certainty 
and evidence, next to that of conscious- 
ness. 

3. But it is to be observed that we are 
conscious of many things to which we give 
little or no attention. We can hardly at- 
tend to several things at the same time ; 
and our attention^ is commonly employed 
about that which is the object of our 
thought, and rarely about the thought it- 
self. Thus, when a man is angry, his 



• To doubt that we are conscious of this or that, 
is impossible. For the doubt must at least postulate 
itself; but the doubt is only a datum of conscious- 
ness ; therefore, in postulating its own reality, it ad. 
mits the truth of consciousness, and consequently 
annihilates itself. See below, p. 579. On Con- 
sciousness, in the history of psychology, see Note IJ. 
— H. 

+ Remembrance cannot be taken out of Con- 
sciousness. See Note H.— VI 



232 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[_ESSAY 



attention is turned to the injury done him, 
or the injurious person; and he gives very 
little attention to the passion of anger, al- 
though he is conscious of it. It is in our 
power, however, when we come to the 
years of understanding, to give attention to 
our own thoughts and passions, and the va- 
rious operations of our minds. And, when 
we make these the objects of our atten- 
tion, either while they are present or 
when they are recent and fresh in our me- 
mory, this act of the mind is called reflec- 
tion. 

We take it for granted, therefore, that, 
by attentive reflection, a man may have a 
clear and certain knowledge of the opera- 
tions of his own mind ; a knowledge no less 
clear and certain than that which he has 
of an external object when it is set before 
his eyes. 

This reflection is a kind of intuition, it 
gives a like conviction with regard to in- 
ternal objects, or things in the mind, as 
the faculty of seeing gives with regard to 
objects of sight. A man must, therefore, 
be convinced beyond possibility of doubt, 
of everything with regard to the opera- 
tions of his own mind, which he clearly 
and distinctly discerns by attentive reflec- 
tion.* 

4. I take it for granted that all the 
thoughts I am conscious of, or remember, 
are the thoughts of one and the same 
thinking principle, which I call myself, or 
my mind. Every man has an immediate 
and irresistible conviction, not only of his 
present existence, but of his continued 
existence and identity, as far back as he 
can remember. If any man should think 
fit to demand [41] a proof that the thoughts 
he is successively conscious of, belong to 
one and the same thinking principle— if 
he should demand a proof that he is the 
same person to-day as he was yesterday, or 
a year ago — I know no proof that can be 
given him : he must be left to himself, 
either as a man that is lunatic, or as one 
who denies first principles, and is not to be 
reasoned with. 

Every man of a sound mind, finds him- 
self under a necessity of believing his own 
identity, and continued existence. The 
conviction of this is immediate and irresist- 
able ; and, if he should lose this conviction, 
it would be a certain proof of insanity, 
which is not to be remedied by reasoning. 

5. I take it for granted, that there are 
some things which cannot exist by them- 
selves, but must be in something else to 
which they belong, as qualities, or attributes. 

Thus, motion cannot exist, but in some- 

* See infra, pp. 60, 105, 581 , where a similar, and 
pp. 324, 516, where a different extension is given to 
Reflection. On Attention and Reflection, in the 
history of psychology, see Note I.— H. 



thing that is moved. And to suppose that 
there can be motion while everything is at 
rest, is a gross and palpable absurdity. In 
like manner, hardness and softness, sweet- 
ness and bitterness, are things which cannot 
exist by themselves ; they are qualities of 
something which is hard or soft, sweet or 
bitter. That thing, whatever it be, of 
which they are qualities, is called their sub- 
ject; and such qualities necessarily suppose 
a subject. 

Things which may exist by themselves, 
and do not necessarily suppose the exist- 
ence of anything else, are called substances ; 
and, with relation to the qualities or attri- 
butes that belong to them, they are called 
the subjects of such qualities or attributes. 

All the things which we immediately per- 
ceive by our senses, and all the things we 
are conscious of, are things which must be 
in something else, as their subject. Thus, 
by my senses, I perceive figure, colour, 
hardness, softness, motion, resistance, and 
such [42] like things. But these are qualities, 
and must necessarily be in something that 
is figured, coloured, hard or soft, that 
moves, or resists. It is not to these qua- 
lities, but to that which is the subject of 
them, that we give the name of body. If 
any man should think fit to deny that these 
things are qualities, or that they require any 
subject, I leave him to enjoy his opinion as 
a man who denies first principles, and is 
not fit to be reasoned with. If he has 
common understanding, he will find that he 
cannot converse half an hour without say- 
ing things which imply the contrary of what 
he professes to believe. 

In like manner, the things I am conscious 
of, such as thought, reasoning, desire, ne- 
cessarily suppose something that thinks, 
that reasons, that desires. We do not give 
the name of mind to thought, reason, or 
desire ; but to that being which thinks, 
which reasons, and which desires. 

That every act or operation, therefore, 
supposes an agent, that every quality sup- 
poses a subject, are things which I do not 
attempt to prove, but take for granted. 
Every man of common understanding dis- 
cerns this immediately, and cannot enter- 
tain the least doubt of it. In all languages, 
we find certain words which, by gramma- 
rians, are called adjectives. Such words 
denote attributes, and every adjective must 
have a substantive to winch it belongs — 
that is, every attribute must have a subject. 
In all languages, we find active verbs which 
denote some action or operation ; and it 
is a fundamental rule in the grammar of all 
languages, that such a verb supposes a per- 
son — that is, in other words, that every 
action must have an agent. We take it, 
therefore, as a first principle, that goodness, 
wisdom, and virtue, can only be in some 

[41, 42] 



CHAP. I!.] 



PRINCIPLES TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 



233 



being that is good, wise, and virtuous ; 
that thinking supposes a being that thinks ; 
and that every operation we are conscious 
of supposes an agent that operates, which 
we call mind. 

6. I take it for granted, that, in most 
operations of the mind, there [4-3] must be an 
object distinct from the operation itself. I 
cannot see, without seeing something. To 
see without having any object of sight is 
absurd. I cannot remember, without re- 
membering something. The thing remem- 
bered is past, while the remembrance of it 
is present ; and, therefore, the operation 
and the object of it must be distinct things. 
The operations of our mind are denoted, in 
all languages, by active transitive verbs, 
which, from their construction in grammar, 
require not only a person or agent, but 
likewise an object of the operation. Thus, 
the verb know, denotes an operation of 
mind. From the general structure of lan- 
guage, this verb requires a person — I know, 
you know, or he knows ; but it requires no 
less a noun in the accusative case, denoting 
the thing known ; for he that knows must 
know something ; and, to know, without 
having any object of knowledge, is an ab- 
surdity too gross to admit of reasoning.* 

7. We ought likewise to take for granted, 
as first principles, things wherein we find 
an universal agreement, among the learned 
and unlearned, in the different nations and 
ages of the world, -f A consent of ages and 
nations, of the learned and vulgar, ought, 
at least, to have great authority, unless we 
can shew some prejudice as universal as 
that consent is, which might be the cause 
of it. Truth is one, but error is infinite. 
There are many truths so obvious to 
the human faculties, that it may be ex- 
pected that men should universally agree in 
them. And this is actually found to be 
the case with regard to many truths, against 
which we find no dissent, unless perhaps 
that of a few sceptical philosophers, who 
may justly be suspected, in such cases, to 
differ from the rest of mankind, through 
pride, obstinacy, or some favourite passion. 
Where there is such universal consent 
in things not deep nor intricate, but which 
lie, as it were, on the surface, there is the 
greatest presumption that can be, that it is 
the natural result of the human faculties ; 
and it must have great authority with every 
sober [44] mind that loves truth. Major 
enim pars eo fere deferri solet quo a natura 
deducitur.—Cic. de Off. I. 41. 

Perhaps it may be thought that it is 
impossible to collect the opinions of all men 
upon any point whatsoever ; and, there- 
fore, that this maxim can be of no use. 
But there are many cases wherein it is 



* See Note B. 
T43-451 



t See Soto A.— H. 



otherwise. Who can doubt, for instance, 
whether mankind have, in all ages, believed 
the existence of a material world, and that 
those things which they see and handle are 
real, and not mere illusions and appari- 
tions ? Who can doubt whether mankind 
have universally believed that everything 
that begins to exist, and every change that 
happens in nature, must have a cause ? 
Who can doubt whether mankind have 
been universally persuaded that there is a 
right and a wrong in human conduct ? — 
some things which, in certain circumstan- 
ces, they ought to do, and other things 
which they ought not to do ? The univers- 
ality of these opinions, and of many such 
that might be named, is sufficiently evi- 
dent, from the whole tenor of men's con- 
duct, as far as our acquaintance reaches, 
and from the records of history, in all 
ages and nations, that are transmitted to 
us. 

There are other opinions that appear to 
be universal, from what is common in the 
structure of all languages, ancient and mo- 
dern, polished and barbarous. Language is 
the express image and picture of human 
thoughts ; and, from the picture, we mayoften 
draw very certain conclusions with regard 
to the original. We find in all languages the 
same parts of speech — nouns substantive 
and adjective, verbs active and passive, 
varied according to the tenses of past, pre- 
sent, and future ; we find adverbs, preposi- 
tions, and conjunctions. There are general 
rules of syntax common to all languages. 
This uniformity in the structure of lan- 
guage shews a certain degree of uniformity 
in those notions upon which the structure of 
language is grounded. 

We find, in the structure of all lan- 
guages, the distinction of [45] acting and 
being acted upon, the distinction of action 
and agent, of quality and subject, and many 
others of the like kind ; which shews that 
these distinctions are founded In the uni- 
versal sense of mankind. We shall have 
frequent occasion to argue from the sense 
of mankind expressed in the structure of 
language ; and therefore it was proper 
here to take notice of the force of argu- 
ments drawn from this topic. 

8. I need hardly say that I shall also 
take for granted such facts as are attested 
to the conviction of all sober and reasonable 
men, either by our senses, by memory, or 
by human testimony. Although some wri- 
ters on this subject have disputed the 
authority of the senses, of memory, and of 
every human faculty, yet we find that such 
persons, in the conduct of life, in pursuing 
their ends, or in avoiding dangers, pay the 
same regard to the authority of their senses 
and other faculties, as the rest of mankind. 
By this they give us just ground to doubt of 



234 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay I. 



their candour in their professions of scep- 
ticism. 

This, indeed, has always heen the fate of 
the few that have professed scepticism, that, 
when they have done what they can to 
discredit their senses, they find themselves, 
after all, under a necessity of trusting to 
them. Mr Hume has been so candid as to 
acknowledge this ; and it is no less true of 
those who have not shewn the same can- 
dour ; for I never heard that any sceptic 
run his head against a post, or stepped into 
a kennel, because he did not believe his 
eyes. 

Upon the whole, I acknowledge that we 
ought to be cautious that we do not adopt 
opinions as first principles which are not 
entitled to that character. But there is 
surely the least danger of men's being im- 
posed upon in this way, when such prin- 
ciples openly lay claim to the character, and 
are thereby fairly exposed to the examina- 
tion of those who may dispute their au- 
thority. We do not pretend that those 
things that are laid down as first principles 
may not be examined, and that we ought 
not to [4G] have our ears open to what 
may be pleaded against their being admit- 
ted as such. Let us deal with them as an 
upright judge does with a witness who has 
a fair character. He pays a regard to the 
testimony of such a witness while his cha- 
racter is unimpeached ; but, if it can be 
shewn that he is suborned, or that he is 
influenced by malice or partial favour, his 
testimony loses all its credit, and is justly 
rejected. 



CHAPTER III. 

OF HYPOTHESES. 

Everv branch of human knowledge hath 
its proper principles, its proper foundation 
and method of reasoning ; and, if we en- 
deavour to build it upon any other found- 
ation, it will never stand firm and stable. 
Thus, the historian builds upon testimony, 
and rarely indulges conjecture ; the anti- 
quarian mixes conjecture with testimony, 
and the former often makes the larger 
ingredient ; the mathematician pays not the 
least regard either to testimony or conjec- 
ture, but deduces everything, by demon- 
strative reasoning, from his definitions and 
axioms. Indeed, whatever is built upon 
conjecture, is improperly called science ; 
for conjecture may beget opinion, but can- 
not produce knowledge. Natural philoso- 
phy must be built upon the phenomena of 
the material system, discovered by observ- 
ation and experiment. 

When men first began to philosophize — 
that is, to carry their thoughts beyond the 



objects of sense, and to inquire into the 
causes of things, and the secret operations 
of nature — it was very natural for them to 
indulge conjecture ; nor was it to be ex- 
pected that, in many ages, they should dis- 
cover the proper and scientific way of pro- 
ceeding in philosophical disquisitions. Ac- 
cordingly, we find that the most ancient 
systems in every branch of philosophy were 
nothing but the conjectures of men famous 
for their wisdom, whose fame gave author- 
ity to their opinions. Thus, in early ages, 
[47] wise men conjectured that this earth 
is a vast plain, surrounded on all hands 
by a boundless ocean ; that, from this ocean, 
the sun, moon, and stars emerge at their 
rising, and plunge into it again at their 
setting. 

With regard to the mind, men in their 
rudest state are apt to conjecture that the 
principle of life in a man is his breath ; be- 
cause the most obvious distinction between 
a living and a dead man is, that the one 
breathes, and the other does not. To this 
it is owing that, in ancient languages, the 
word which denotes the soul, is that which 
properly signifies breath or air. 

As men advance in knowledge, their first 
conjectures appear silly and childish, and 
give place to others, which tally better with 
later observations and discoveries. Thus 
one system of philosophy succeeds another, 
without any claim to superior merit, but 
this — that it is a more ingenious system of 
conjectures, and accounts better for com- 
mon appearances. 

To omit many ancient systems of this 
kind, Des Cartes, about the middle of the 
last century, dissatisfied with the materia 
prima, the substantial forms, and the occult 
qualities of the Peripatetics, conjectured 
boldly, that the heavenly bodies of our sys- 
tem are carried round by a vortex or whirl- 
pool of subtile matter, just as straws and 
chaff are carried round in a tub of water. 
He conjectured, that the soul is seated in a 
small gland in the brain, called the pineal 
gland ; that there, as in her chamber of 
presence, she receives intelligence of every- 
thing that affects the senses, by means of a 
subtile fluid contained in the nerves, called 
the animal spirits ; and that she dispatches 
these animal spirits, as her messengers, to 
put in motion the several muscles of the 
body, as there is occasion. • By such con- 

* It is not, however, to be supposed that Des Cartes 
allowed the soul to be seated by loral presence in any 
part of the tody ; for the smallest point of body is 
still extended, and mind is absolutely simple and in- 
capable of occnpying-place. The pineal gland, in the 
Cartesian drctrine, is only analogically called the seat 
of the soul, inasmuch as this is viewed as the cen. 
tral point of the corporeal organism; but while 
through this point the mind and body are mutually 
connected, that connection is not ore of a mere 
physical dependence, as they do not operate on each 
bv direct and natural causation.— H. 

[46, 1-7] 



CHAP. III.] 



OF HYPOTHESES. 



235 



jectures as these, Des Cartes could account 
for every phsenomenon in nature, in such a 
plausible manner as gave satisfaction to a 
great part of the learned world for more 
than half a century. [48] 

Such conjectures in philosophical matters 
have commonly got the name of hypotheses, 
or theories.* And the invention of a hypo- 
thesis, founded on some slight probabilities, 
which accounts for many appearances of 
nature, has been considered as the highest 
attainment of a philosopher. If the hypo- 
thesis hangs well together, is embellished 
by a lively imagination, and serves to ac- 
count for common appearances, it is con- 
sidered by many as having all the qualities 
that should recommend it to our belief, 
and all that ought to be required in a philo- 
sophical system. 

There is such proneness in men of genius 
to invent hypotheses, and in others to 
acquiesce in them, as the utmost which the 
human faculties can attain in philosophy, 
that it is of the last consequence to the pro- 
gress of real knowledge, that men should 
have a clear and distinct understanding of 
the nature of hypotheses in philosophy, and 
of the regard that is due to them. 

Although some conjectures may have a 
considerable degree of probability, yet it is 
evidently in the nature of conjecture to be 
uncertain. In every case the assent ought 
to be proportioned to the evidence ; for to 
believe firmly what has but a small degree 
of probability, is a manifest abuse of our 
understanding. Now, though we may, in 
many cases, form very probable conjectures 
concerning the works of men, every conjec- 
ture we can form with regard to the works 
of God has as little probability as the con- 
jectures of a child with regard to the works 
of a man. 

The wisdom of God exceeds that of the 
wisest man, more than his wisdom exceeds 
that of a child. If a child were to conjec- 
ture how an army is to be formed in the 
day of battle — how a city is to be fortified, 
or a state governed — what chance has he 
to guess right ? As little chance has the 
wisest man when he pretends to conjecture 
how the planets move in their courses, how 
the sea ebbs and flows, and how our minds 
act upon our bodies. [49] 

If a thousand of the greatest wits that 
ever the world produced were, without any 
previous knowledge in anatomy, to sit down 
and contrive how, and by what internal 
organs, the various functions of the human 
body are carried on, how the blood is made 
to circulate and the limbs to move, they 
would not, in a thousand years, hit upon any- 
thing like the truth. 

Of all the discoveries that have been 

* See above, note *, p. 97, b— H. 
[48-50] 



! made concerning the inward structure of 
the human body, never one was made by 
conjecture. Accurate observations of ana- 
tomists have brought to light innumerable 
artifices of Nature in the contrivance of this 
machine of the human body, which we can- 
not but admire as excellently adapted to 
their several purposes. But the most saga- 
cious physiologist never dreamed of them 
till they were discovered. On the other 
hand, innumerable conjectures, formed in 
different ages, with regard to the structure 
of the body, have been confuted by obser- 
vation, and none ever confirmed. 

What we have said of the internal struc- 
ture of the human body, may be said, with 
justice, of every other part of the works of 
God, wherein any real discovery has been 
made. Such discoveries have always been 
made by patient observation, by accurate 
experiments, or by conclusions drawn by 
strict reasoning from observations and ex- 
periments ; and such discoveries have always 
tended to refute, but not to confirm, the 
theories and hypotheses which ingenious 
men have invented. 

As this is a fact confirmed by the history 
of philosophy in all past ages, it ought to 
have taught men, long ago, to treat with 
just contempt hypotheses in every branch 
of philosophy, and to despair of ever ad- 
vancing real knowledge in that way. The 
Indian philosopher, being at a loss to know 
how the earth was supported, invented the 
hypothesis of a huge elephant ; and this 
elephant he supposed to stand upon the 
back of a huge tortoise. This hypothesis, 
however ridiculous it appears to us, might 
seem very reasonable [50] toother Indians, 
who knew no more than the inventor of it ; 
and the same will be the fate of all hypo- 
theses invented by men to account for the 
works of God. They may have a decent 
and plausible appearance to those who are 
not more knowing than the inventor ; but, 
when men come to be more enlightened, 
they will always appear ridiculous and 
childish. 

This has been the case with regard to 
hypotheses that have been revered by the 
most enlightened part of mankind for hun- 
dreds of years ; and it will always be the 
case to the end of the world. For, until 
the wisdom of men bear some proportion to 
the wisdom of God, their attempts to find 
out the structure of his works, by the force 
of their wit and genius, will be vain. 

The finest productions of human art are 
immensely short of the meanest works of 
Nature. The nicest artist cannot make a 
feather or the leaf of a tree. Human 
workmanship will never bear a comparison 
with divine. Conjectures and hypotheses 
are the invention and the workmanship of 
men, and must bear proportion to the capa- 



236 



OX THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay I. 



city and skill of the inventor ; .and, there- 
fore, will always be very unlike to the 
works of God, which it is the business of 
philosophy to discover. 

The world has been so long befooled by 
hypotheses in all parts of philosophy, that 
it is of the utmost consequence to every 
man who would make any progress in real 
knowledge, to treat them with just con- 
tempt, as the reveries of vain and fanciful 
men,whose pride makes them conceive them- 
selves able to unfold the mysteries of nature 
by the force of their genius. A learned man, 
in an epistle to Des Cartes, has the follow- 
ing observation, which very much deserved 
the attention of that philosopher, and of all 
that come after him : — " When men, sit- 
ting in their closet, and consulting only 
their books, attempt disquisitions into nature, 
they may, indeed, tell how they would have 
made the world, if God had given them that 
in commission ; that is, they may describe 
[51] chimeras, which correspond with the 
imbecility of their own minds, no less than 
the admirable beauty of the universe cor- 
responds with the infinite perfection of its 
Creator ; but without an understanding 
truly divine, they can never form such an 
idea to themselves as the Deity had in 
creating things." 

Let us, therefore, lay down this as a 
fundamental principle in our inquiries into 
the structure of the mind and its opera- 
tions — that no regard is due to the conjec- 
tures or hypotheses of philosophers, how- 
ever ancient, however generally received. 
Let us accustom ourselves to try every 
opinion by the touchstone of fact and ex- 
perience. What can fairly be deduced 
from facts duly observed or sufficiently at- 
tested, is genuine and pure ; it is the voice 
of God, and no fiction of human imagina- 
tion. 

The first rule of philosophising laid down 
by the great Newton, is this : — Causas re- 
rum naturalium, non phircs admitti debere, 
quam qua et vera sint, et earum phceno 
menis explicandis svfficiant. " No more 
causes, nor any other causes of natural 
effects, ought to be admitted, but such as 
are both true, and are sufficient for ex- 
plaining their appearances." This is a golden 
rule ; it is the true and proper test, by 
which what is sound and solid in philoso- 
phy may be distinguished from what is hol- 
low and vain.* 

If a philosopher, therefore, pretends to 
shew us the cause of any natural effect, 
whether relating to matter or to mind, let 
us first consider whether there is sufficient 



• For this rule we are not indebted to Newton. 
It is only the old law of parcimony, and that ambigu- 
ous'y expressed. For, in their plain meaning, the 
words " et vcrce sint" are redundant ; or what follows is 
redundant, and the whole rule a barren truism. — H. 



evidence that the cause he assigns does 
really exist. If there is not, reject it with 
disdain, as a fiction which ought to have no 
place in genuine philosophy. If the cause 
assigned really exists, consider, in the next 
place, whether the effect it is brought to 
explain necessarily follows from it. Un- 
less it has these two conditions, it is good 
for nothing. 

When Newton had shewn the admirable 
effects of gravitation in our planetary sys- 
tem, he must have felt a strong desire to 
know [52] its cause. He could have in- 
vented a hypothesis for this purpose, as 
many had done before him. But his phi- 
losophy was of another complexion. Let 
us hear what he says : Rationem harttm 
gravitatis proprietatum ex phanomenis mm 
potui deiucere, et hypotheses non Jingo. 
Qulcquid enim ex -phanomenis non deduci- 
tur hypothesis vocanda est. Et hypotheses, 
seu metaphydca, aeu physica, sen qualila- 
tum occullarum, seu mechunica, in philoso- 
phia experimeniali locum non habent. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF ANALOGY. 

It is natural to men to judge of things 
less known, by some similitude they ob- 
serve, or think they observe, between them 
and things more familiar or better known. 
In many cases, we have no better way of 
judging. And, where the things compared 
have really a great similitude in their na- 
ture, when there is reason to think that they 
are subject to the same laws, there may be 
a considerable degree of probability in con- 
clusions drawn from analogy. 

Thus, we may observe a very great si- 
militude between this earth which we in- 
habit, and the other planets, Saturn, Ju- 
piter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. They 
all revolve round the sun, as the earth 
does, although at different distances and 
in different periods. They borrow all their 
light from the sun, as the earth does. 
Several of them are known to revolve round 
their axis like the earth, and, by that 
means, must have a like succession of day 
and night. Some of them have moons, 
that serve to give them light in the absence 
of the sun, as our moon does to us. They 
are all, in their motions, subject to the 
same law of gravitation, as the earth is. 
From all this similitude, it is not unrea- 
sonable to think, that those planets may, 
like our earth, be the habitation of va- 
rious [53] orders of living creatures. There 
is some probability in this conclusion from 
analogy. 

In medicine, physicians must, for the 
most part, be directed in their prescriptions 

[51-53] 



IV.] 



OF ANALOGY. 



237 



by analogy. The constitution of one human 
body is so like to that of another that it is 
reasonable to think that what is the cause 
of health or sickness to one, may have the 
same effect upon another. And this ge- 
nerally is found true, though not without 
some exceptions. 

In politics we reason, for the most part, 
from analogy. The constitution of human 
nature is so similar in different societies or 
commonwealths, that the causes of peace 
and war, of tranquillity and sedition, of 
riches and poverty, of improvement and 
degeneracy, are much the same in all. 

Analogical reasoning, therefore, is not, 
in all cases, to be rejected. It may afford 
a greater or a less degree of probability, 
according as the things compared are more 
or less similar in their nature. But it 
ought to be observed, that, as this kind of 
reasoning can afford only probable evidence 
at best ; so, unless great caution be used, 
we are apt to be led into error by it. For 
men are naturally disposed to conceive a 
greater similitude in things than there 
really is. 

To give an instance of this : Anatomists, 
in ancient ages, seldom dissected human 
bodies ; but very often the bodies of those 
quadrupeds whose internal structure was 
thought to approach nearest to that of the 
human body. Modern anatomists have 
discovered many mistakes the ancients 
were led into, by their conceiving a greater 
similitude between the structure of men 
and of some beasts than there is in reality. 
By this, and many other instances that 
might be given, it appears that conclusions 
built on analogy stand on a slippery founda- 
tion ; and that we ought never to rest upon 
evidence of this kind, when we can have 
more direct evidence. [54] 

I know no author who has made a more 
just and a more happy use of this mode of 
reasoning than Bishop Butler, in his "Ana- 
logy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to 
the Constitution and Course of Nature." 
In that excellent work the author does not 
ground any of the truths of religion upon 
analogy, as their proper evidence. He 
only makes use of analogy to answer objec- 
tions against them. When objections are 
made against the truths of religion, which 
may be made with equal strength against 
what we know to be true in the course 
of nature, such objections can have no 
weight. 

Analogical reasoning, therefore, may be 
of excellent use in answering objections 
against truths which have other evidence. 
It may likewise give a greater or a less 
degree of probability in cases where we can 
find no other evidence. But all arguments, 
drawn from analogy, are still the weaker, 
the greater disparity there is between the 
T54. 55] 



things compared ; and, therefore, must be 
weakest of all when we compare body with 
mind, because there are no two things in 
nature more unlike. 

There is no subject in which men have 
always been so prone to form their notions 
by analogies of this kind, as in what re- 
lates to the mind. We form an early ac- 
quaintance with material things by means 
of our senses, and are bred up in a con- 
stant familiarity with them. Hence we 
are apt to measure all things by them ; and 
to ascribe to things most remote from mat- 
ter, the qualities that belong to material 
things. It is for this reason, that man- 
kind have, in all ages, been so prone to 
conceive the mind itself to be some sub- 
tile kind of matter : that they have been 
disposed to ascribe human figure and hu- 
man organs, not only to angels, but even 
to the Deity. Though we are conscious of 
the operations of our own minds when they 
are exerted, and are capable of attending 
to them, so as to form a distinct notion of 
them, this is so difficult a work to men 
whose attention is constantly solicited by 
external objects, that we give them names 
from things that are familiar, and which 
[55] are conceived to have some similitude 
to them ; and the notions we form of them 
are no less analogical than the names we 
give them. Almost all the words by which 
we express the operations of the mind, are 
borrowed from material objects. To un- 
derstand, to conceive, to imagine, to com- 
prehend, to deliberate, to infer, and many 
others, are words of this kind ; so that the 
very language of mankind, with regard to 
the operations of our minds, is analogical. 
Because bodies are affected only by con- 
tact and pressure, we are apt to conceive 
that what is an immediate object of thought, 
and affects the mind, must be in contact 
with it, and make some impression upon 
it. When we imagine anything, the very 
word leads us to think that there must be 
some image in the mind of the thing con- 
ceived. It is evident that these notions 
are drawn from some similitude conceived 
between body and mind, and between the 
properties of body and the operations of 
mind- 
To illustrate more fully that analogical 
reasoning from a supposed similitude of 
mind to body, which I conceive to be the 
most fruitful source of error with regard to 
the operations of our minds, I shall give an 
instance of it. 

When a man is urged by contrary motives 
— those on one hand inciting him to do some 
action, those on the other to forbear it — he 
deliberates about it, and at last resolves to 
do it, or not to do it. The contrary motives 
are here compared to the weights in the 
opposite scales of a balance ; and there i3 



238 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay I. 



not, perhaps, any instance that can be 
named of a more striking analogy between 
body and mind. Hence the phrases of 
weighing motives, of deliberating upon 
actions, are commoir to all languages. 

From this analogy, some philosophers 
draw very important conclusions. They 
say, that, as the balance cannot incline to 
one side more than the other when the 
opposite weights are equal, so a man can- 
not possibly determine himself if the motives 
on both hands are equal ; and, as the bal- 
ance must necessarily turn to that side [56] 
which has most weight, so the man must 
necessarily be determined to that hand 
where the motive is strongest. And on 
this foundation some of the schoolmen* 
maintained that, if a hungry ass were 
placed between two bundles of hay equally 
inviting, the beast must stand still and starve 
to death, being unable to turn to either, 
because there are equal motives to both. 
This is an instance of that analogical rea- 
soning which I conceive ought never to be 
trusted ; for the analogy between a balance 
and a man deliberating, though one of the 
strongest that can be found between matter 
and mind, is too weak to support any argu- 
ment. A piece of dead inactive matter, 
and an active intelligent being, are things 
very unlike ; and, because the one would 
remain at rest in a certain case, it does not 
follow that the other would be inactive in a 
case somewhat similar. The argument is 
no better than this — That, because a dead 
animal moves only as it is pushed, and, if 
pushed with equal force in contrary direc- 
tions, must remain at rest ; therefore, the 
same thing must happen to a living animal ; 
for, surely, th-e similitude between a dead 
animal and a living, is as great as that 
between a balance and a man. 

The conclusion I would draw from all 
that has been said on analogy, is, that, in 
our inquiries concerning the mind and its 
operations, we ought never to trust to rea- 
sonings drawn from some supposed simili- 
tude of body to mind ; and that we ought 
to be very much upon our guard that we 
be not imposed upon by those analogical 
terms and phrases, by which the operations 
of the mind are expressed in all languages. 
[57] 



* Ttiis illustration is specially associated with 
Joannes Buridanus, a celebrated Nominalist, of the 
14th century, andone-of the acutest reasoners on the 
great question of moral liberty. The supposition 
of the ass, &c, is not, however, as I have ascertained, 
to he found in his writings. Perhaps it was orally 
advanced in disputation, or in lecturing, as an ex- 
ample in illustration of h;s Determinism ; perhaps it 
was employed by his opponents as an instance to 
reduce that doctrine to absurdity. With this latter 
view, a similar refutation of the principles of our 
modern Fatalists was, as we have s en, ingeniously 
essayed by Reid's friend and kinsman, Dr James 
Gregory.— H. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF THE PROPER MEANS OF KNOWING THE 
OPERATIONS OF THE MIND. 

Since we ought to pay no regard to hypo- 
theses, and to be very suspicious of analo- 
gical reasoning, it may be asked, From what 
source must the knowledge of the mind 
and its faculties be drawn ? 

I answer, the chief and proper source of 
this branch of knowledge is accurate reflec- 
tion upon the operations of our own minds. 
Of this source we shall speak more fully, 
after making some remarks upon two others 
that may be subservient to it. The first of 
them is attention to the structure of lan- 
guage. 

The language of mankind is expressive of 
their thoughts, and of the various opera- 
tions of their minds. The various opera- 
tions of the understanding, will, and pas- 
sions, which are common to mankind, have 
various forms of speech corresponding to 
them in all languages, which are the signs 
of them, and by which they are expressed : 
And a due attention to the signs may, in 
many cases, give considerable light to the 
things signified by them. 

There are in all languages modes of 
speech, by which men signify their judg- 
ment, or give their testimony ; by which 
they accept or refuse ; by which they ask 
information or advice ; by which they com- 
mand, or threaten, or supplicate ; by which 
they plight their faith in promises or con- 
tracts. If such operations were not com- 
mon to mankind, we should not find in all 
languages forms of speech, by which they 
are expressed. 

All languages, indeed, have their imper- 
fections — they can never be adequate to all 
the varieties of human thought ; and there- 
fore things may be really distinct in their 
nature, and capable of being distinguished 
by the human mind, which are not distin- 
guished [58] in common language. "We can 
only expect, in the structure of languages, 
those distinctions which all mankind in the 
common business of life have occasion to 
make. 

There may be peculiarities in a particular 
language, of the causes of which we are 
ignorant, and from which, therefore, we can 
draw no conclusion. But whatever we find 
common to all languages, must have a com- 
mon cause ; must be owing to some com- 
mon notion or sentiment of the human 
mind. 

We gave some examples of this before, 
and shall here add another. All languages 
have a plural number in many of their 
nouns ; from which wa may infer that all 
men have notions, not of individual things 

[56-5*1 



CHAP. V.] 



OPERATIONS OF THE MIND. 



239 



only, but of attributes, or things which are 
common to many individuals ; for no indi- 
vidual can have a plural number. 

Another source of information in this 
subject, is a due attention to the course of 
human actions and conduct. The actions 
of men are effects ; their sentiments, their 
passions, and their affections, are the causes 
of those effects ; and we may, in many cases, 
form a judgment of the cause from the 
effect. 

The behaviour of parents towards their 
children gives sufficient evidence even to 
those who never had children, that the 
parental affection is common to mankind. 
It is easy to see, from the general conduct 
of men, what are the natural objects of their 
esteem, their admiration, their love, their 
approbation, their resentment, and of all 
their other original dispositions. It is 
obvious, from the conduct of men in all 
ages, that man is by his nature a social 
animal; that he delights to associate with 
his species ; to converse, and to exchange 
good offices with them. 

Not only the actions, but even the opi- 
nions of men may sometimes give light 
into the frame of the human mind. The 
opinions of men may be considered as the 
effects of their intellectual powers, [59] as 
their actions are the effects of their active 
principles. Even the prejudices and errors 
of mankind, when they are general, must 
have some cause no less general ; the dis- 
covery of which will throw some light upon 
the frame of the human understanding. 

I conceive this to be the principal use of 
the history of philosophy. When we trace 
the history of the various philosophical opin- 
ions that have sprung up among thinking 
men, we are led into a labyrinth of fanciful 
opinions, contradictions, and absurdities, 
intermixed with some truths ; yet we may 
sometimes find a clue to lead us through the 
several windings of this labyrinth. We may 
find that point of view which presented 
things to the author of the system, in the 
li^ht in which they appeared to him. This 
will often give a consistency to things seem- 
ingly contradictory, and some degree of 
probability to those that appeared most 
fanciful. * 

The history of philosophy, considered as 
a map of the intellectual operations of men 
of genius, must always be entertaining, and 
may sometimes give us views of the human 
understanding, which could not easily be had 
any other way. 

I return to what I mentioned as the main 
source of information on this subject — at- 
tentive reflection upon the operations of our 
own minds. 



» " Ivory error," says Bossuet, 
abused."— H. 



[69-61] 



All the notions we have of mind and of 
its operations, are, by Mr Locke, called 
ideas of reflection.* A man may have as 
distinct notions of remembrance, of judg- 
ment, of will, of desire, as he has of any 
object whatever. Such notions, as Mr 
Locke justly observes, are got by the power 
of reflection. But what is this power of 
reflection ? " It is," says the same author, 
" that power by which the mind turns its 
view inward, and observes its own actions 
and operations." He observes elsewhere, 
" That the understanding, like the eye, 
whilst it makes us see and perceive all [60] 
other things, takes no notice of itself; and 
that it requires art and pains to set it at a 
distance, and make it its own object." 
Cicero hath expressed this sentiment most 
beautifully. Tusc. I. 28. 

This power of the understanding to make 
its own operations its object, to attend to 
them, and examine them on all sides, is the 
power of reflection, by which alone we can 
have any distinct notion of the powers of our 
own or of other minds. 

This reflection ought to be distinguished 
from consciousness, with which it is too 
often confounded; even by Mr Locke. All 
men are conscious of the operations of their 
own minds, at all times, while they are 
awake ; but there are few who reflect upon 
them, or make them objects of thought. 

From infancy, till we come to the years 
of understanding, we are employed solely 
about external objects. And, although the 
mind is conscious of its operations, it does 
not attend to them ; its attention is turned 
solely to the external objects, about which 
those operations are employed. Thus, when 
a man is angry, he is conscious of his pas- 
sion ; but his attention is turned to the 
person who offended him, and the circum- 
stances of the offence, while the passion of 
anger is not in the least the object of his 
attention. 

I conceive this is sufficient to shew the 
difference between consciousness of the 
operations of our minds, and reflection upon 
them ; and to shew that we may have the 
former without any degree of the latter. 
The difference between consciousness and 
reflection, is like to the difference between 
a superficial view of an object which pre- 
sents itself to the eye while we are engaged 
about something else, and that attentive 
examination which we give to an object 
when we are wholly employed in surveying 
it. Attention is a voluntary act ; it re- 
quires an active exertion to begin and to 
continue it, and it may be continued as 
long as we will ; but consciousness [61] is 

* Locke is not (as Reid seems tn think, and as Mi 
Stewart expressly says) the first who introduced Re. 
(lection either as a ps> etiological term, or apsycholo- 
gical principle. See Note I. — H. 



240 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay i. 



involuntary and of no continuance, changing 
with every thought. 

The power of reflection upon the oper- 
ations of their own minds, does not appear 
at all in children. Men must be come to 
some ripeness of understanding before they 
are capable of it. Of all the powers of the 
human mind, it seems to be the last that 
unfolds itself. Most men seem incapable of 
acquiring it in any considerable degree. 
Like all our other powers, it is greatly im- 
proved by exercise ; and until a man has 
got the habit of attending to the operations 
of his own mind, he can never have clear 
and distinct notions of them, nor form any 
steady judgment concerning them. His 
opinions must be borrowed from others, his 
notions confused and indistinct, and he may 
easily be led to swallow very gross absurd- 
ities. To acquire this habit, is a work of 
time and labour, even in those who begin it 
early, and whose natural talents are toler- 
ably fitted for it ; but the difficulty will be 
daily diminishing, and the advantage of it 
is great. They will, thereby, be enabled to 
think with precision and accuracy on every 
subject, especially on those subjects that 
are more abstract. They will be able to 
judge for themselves in many important 
points, wherein others must blindly follow a 
leader. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OP THE DIFFICULTY OF ATTENDING TO THE 
OPERATIONS OF OUR OWN MINDS. 

The difficulty of attending to our mental 
operations, ought to be well understood, and 
justly estimated, by those who would make 
any progress in this science ; that they may 
neither, on the one hand, expect success 
without pains and application of thought ; 
nor, on the other, be discouraged, by con- 
ceiving that the obstacles that lie in the way 
are insuperable, and that there is no cer- 
tainty to be attained in it. I shall, there- 
fore, endeavour to point [62] out the causes 
of this difficulty, and the effects that have 
arisen from it, that we may be able to form 
a true judgment of both. 

1. The number and quick succession of 
the operations of the mind, make it difficult 
to give due attention to them. It is well 
known that, if a great number of obj.cts be 
presented in quick succession, even to the 
eye, they are confounded in the memory 
and imagination. We retain a confused 
notion of the whole, and a more confused 
one of the several parts, especially if they 
are objects to which we have never before 
given particular attention. No succession 
can be more quick than that of thought. 
The mind is busy while we are awake, con- 



tinually passing from one thought and one 
operation to another. The scene is con- 
stantly shifting. Every man will be sen- 
sible of this, who tries but for one minute 
to keep the same thought in his imagination, 
without addition or variation. He will find 
it impossible to keep the scene of his imagin- 
ation fixed. Other objects will intrude, 
without being called, and all he can do is to 
reject these intruders as quickly as possible, 
and return to his principal object. 

2. In this exercise, we go contrary to 
habits which have been early acquired, and 
confirmed by long unvaried practice. From 
infancy, we are accustomed to attend to 
objects of sense, and to them only ; and, 
when sensible objects have got such strong 
hold of the attention by confirmed habit, it 
is not easy to dispossess them. When we 
grow up, a variety of external objects 
solicits our attention, excites our curiosity, 
engages our affections, or touches our pas- 
sions ; and the constant round of employ- 
ment, about external objects, draws off the 
mind from attending to itself; so that 
nothing is more just than the observation 
of Mr Locke, before mentioned, " That the 
understanding, like the eye, while it sur- 
veys all the objects around it, commonly 
takes no notice of itself." 

3. The operations of the mind, from their 
very nature, lead the mind to give its atten- 
tion to some other object. Our sensations, 
[63] as will be shewn afterwards, are natu- 
ral signs, and turn our attention to the things 
signified by them ; so much that most of 
them, and those the most frequent and 
familiar, have no name in any language. In 
perception, memory, judgment, imagination, 
and reasoning, there is an object distinct 
from the operation itself ; and, while we are 
led by a strong impulse to attend to the 
object, the operation escapes our notice. 
Our passions, affections, and all our active 
powers, have, in like manner, their objects 
which engross our attention, and divert it 
from the passion itself. 

4. To this we may add a just observation 
made by Mr Hume, That, when the mind 
is agitated by any passion, as soon as we 
turn our attention from the object to the 
passion itself, the passion subsides or van- 
ishes, and, by that means, escapes our 
inquiry. This, indeed, is common to almost 
every operation of the mind. When it is 
exerted, we are conscious of it ; but then 
we do not attend to the operation, but to 
its object. When the mind is drawn off 
from the object to attend to its own opera- 
tion, that operation ceases, and escapes our 
notice. 

5. As it is not sufficient to the discovery 
of mathematical truths, that a man be able 
to attend to mathematical figures, as it is 
necessary that he should have the ability to 

[62, 63] 



CHAP. VI.] 



OPERATIONS OF THE MIND. 



241 



distinguish accurately things that differ, 
and to discern clearly the various relations 
of the quantities he compares — an ability 
which, though much greater in those who 
have the force of genius than in others, 
yet, even in them, requires exercise and 
habit to bring it to maturity — so, in order 
to discover the truth in what relates to the 
operations of the mind, it is not enough that 
a man be able to give attention to them : 
he must have the ability to distinguish ac- 
curately their minute differences ; to resolve 
and analyse complex operations into their 
simple ingredients ; to unfold the ambiguity 
of words, which in this science is greater 
than in any other, and to give them the same 
accuracy and precision that mathematical 
terms have ; for, indeed, the same precision 
in the use of words, the same cool attention 
to [64] the minute differences of things, 
the same talent for abstraction and analys- 
ing, which fit a man for the study of math- 
ematics, are no less necessary in this. But 
there is thi&great difference between the two 
sciences — that the objects of mathematics 
being things external to the mind, it is 
much more easy to attend to them, and fix 
them steadily in the imagination. 

The difficulty attending our inquiries 
into the powers of the mind, serves to 
account for some events respecting this 
branch of philosophy, which deserve to be 
mentioned. 

While most branches of science have, 
either in ancient or in modern times, been 
highly cultivated, and brought to a con- 
siderable degree of perfection, this remains, 
to this day, in a very low state, and, as it 
were, in its infancy. 

Every science invented by men must 
have its beginning and its progress ; and, 
from various causes, it may happen that 
one science shall be brought to a great 
degree of maturity, while another is yet in 
its infancy. The maturity of a science may 
be judged of by this — When it contains a 
system of principles, and conclusions drawn 
from them, which are so firmly established 
that, among thinking and intelligent men, 
there remains no doubt or dispute about 
them ; so that those who come after may 
raise the superstructure higher, but shall 
never be able to overturn what is already 
built, in order to begin on a new founda- 
tion. 

Geometry seems to have been in its in- 
fancy about the time of Thales and Pytha- 
goras ; because many of the elementary 
propositions, on which the whole science is 
built, are ascribed to them as the inventors. 
Euclid's ' l Elements," which were written 
some ages after Pythagoras, exhibit a sys- 
tem of geometry which deserves the name 
of a science ; and, though great additions 
have been made by Apollonius, Archi- 
T64-66] 



medes, Pappus, and others among the an- 
cients, and still greater by the moderns ; 
yet what [65] was laid down in Euclid's 
" Elements" was never set aside. It re- 
mains as the firm foundation of all future 
superstructures in that science. 

Natural philosophy remained in its in- 
fant state near two thousand years after 
geometry had attained to its manly form : 
for natural philosophy seems not to have 
been built on a stable foundation, nor carried 
to any degree of maturity, till the last cen- 
tury. The system of Des Cartes, which was 
all hypothesis, prevailed in the most enlight- 
ened part of Europe till towards the end of 
last century. Sir Isaac Newton has the 
merit of giving the form of a science to this 
branch of philosophy ; and it need not ap- 
pear surprising, if the philosophy of the 
human mind should be a century or two 
later in being brought to maturity. 

It has received great accessions from the 
labours of several modern authors ; and 
perhaps wants little more to entitle it to the 
name of a science, but to be purged of cer- 
tain hypotheses, which have imposed on 
some of the most acute writers on this sub- 
ject, and led them into downright scepticism. 

What the ancients have delivered to us 
concerning the mind and its operations, is 
almost entirely drawn, not from accurate 
reflection, but from some conceived analogy 
between body and mind- And, although 
the modern authors I formerly named have 
given more attention to the operations of 
their own minds, and by that means have 
made important discoveries, yet, by re- 
taining some of the ancient analogical no- 
tions, their discoveries have been less use- 
ful than they might have been, and have 
led to scepticism. 

It may happen in science, as in building, 
that an error in the foundation shall weaken 
the whole ; and the farther the building is 
carried on, this weakness shall become the 
more apparent and the more threatening. 
Something of this kind seems to have hap- 
pened in our systems concerning the mind. 
The accession they [66] have received by 
modern discoveries, though very important in 
itself, has thrown darkness and obscurity 
upon the whole, and has led men rather to 
scepticism than to knowledge. This must 
be owing to some fundamental errors that 
have not been observed ; and when these 
are corrected, it is to be hoped that the im- 
provements that have been made will have 
their due effect. 

The last effect I observe of the difficulty 
of inquiries into the powers of the mind, is, 
that there is no other part of human know- 
ledge in which ingenious authors have been 
so apt to run into strange paradoxes, and 
even into gross absurdities. 

When we find philosophers maintaining 

K 



242 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



£essay 



that there is no heat in the fire, nor colour 
in the rainbow ;* when we find the gravest 
philosophers, from Des Cartes down to 
Bishop Berkeley, mustering up arguments 
to prove the existence of a material world, 
and unable to find any that will bear ex- 
amination ; when we find Bishop Berkeley 
and Mr Hume, the acutest metaphysicians 
uf the age, maintaining that there is no such 
thing as matter in the universe — that sun, 
moon, and stars, the earth which we inhabit, 
our own bodies, and those of our friends, are 
only ideas in our minds, and have no exist- 
ence but in thought ; when we find the 
last maintaining that there is neither body 
nor mind — nothing in nature but ideas and 
impressions, without any substance on which 
they are impressed — that there is no cer- 
tainty, nor indeed probability, even in ma- 
thematical axioms : I say, when we consider 
such extravagancies of many of the most 
acute writers on this subject, we may be apt 
to think the whole to be only a dream of 
fanciful men, who have entangled them- 
selves in cobwebs spun out of their own 
brain. But we ought to consider that the 
more closely and ingeniously men reason 
from false principles, the more absurdities 
they will be led into ; and when such absur- 
dities help to bring to light the false prin- 
ciples from which they are drawn, they may 
be the more easily forgiven. [67] 

CHAPTER VII. 

DIVISION OF THE POWERS OF THE MIND. 

The powers of the mind are so many, so 
various, and so connected and complicated 
in most of its operations, that there never 
has been any division of them proposed 
which is not liable to considerable objec- 
tions. We shall, therefore, take that gene- 
ral division which is the most common, into 
the powers of understanding and those of 
wil/.-f Under the will we comprehend our 
active powers, and all that lead to action, 
or influence the mind to act — such as appe- 
tites, passions, affections. The understand- 
ing comprehends our contemplative powers ; 
by which w r e perceive objects ; by which 
we conceive or remember them ; by which 
we analyse or compound them ; and by which 
we judge and reason concerning them. 



* A merely verbal dispute. See before, p. 2i'5, b, 
note.— H. 

T It would be out of place to enter on the exten. 
give field of history and discussion relative to the 
distribution of our mental powers. It is sufficient 
to say, that the vulgar division of the faculties, 
adopted by Reid, into those of the Understanding 
and those of the Will, is to be traced to the classifi- 
cation, taken in the Aristotelic school, of the powers 
into gnostic, or cognitive, and orectic, or appetent. 
On this the reader may consult the admirablenntro- 
duction of Philoponus— or rather of Ammonius Her. 
mise— to the books of Aristotle upon the Soul.— H. 



Although this general division may be of 
use in order to our proceeding more metho- 
dically in our subject, we are not to under- 
stand it as if, in those operations which are 
ascribed to the understanding, there were 
no exertion of will or activity, or as if the 
understanding w T ere not employed in the 
operations ascribed to the will ; for I con- 
ceive there is no operation of the under- 
standing wherein the mind is not active in 
some degree. We have some command 
over our thoughts, and can attend to this 
or to that, of many objects which present 
themselves to our senses, to our memory, 
or to our imagination. We can survey an 
pbject on this side or that, superficially or 
accurately, for a longer or a shorter time ; 
so that our contemplative powers are under 
the guidance and direction of the active ; 
and the former never pursue their object 
without being led and directed, urged or 
restrained by the latter : and because the 
understanding is always more or less di- 
rected by the will, mankind have ascribed 
some degree of activity to [68] the mind in 
its intellectual operations, as well as in those 
which belong to the will, and have ex- 
pressed them by active verbs, such as see- 
ing, hearing, judging, reasoning, and the 
like. 

And as the mind exerts some degree of 
activity even in the operations of under- 
standing, so it is certain that there can be 
no act of will which is not accompanied 
with some act of understanding. The will 
must have an object, and that object must 
be apprehended or conceived in the under- 
standing. It is, therefore, to be remem- 
bered, that, in most, if not all operations of 
the mind, both faculties concur ; and we 
range the operation under that faculty which 
hath the largest share in it. • 

The intellectual powers are commonly 
divided into simple apprehension, judgment, 
and reasoning. -f As this division has in 
its favour the authority of antiquity, and of 
a very general reception, it would be im- 
proper to set it aside without giving any 
reason : I shall, therefore, explain it briefly, 
and give the reasons why I choose to follow 
another. 



« It should be always remembered that the various 
mental energies are all only possible in and through 
each other; and that our psychological analyses do not 
suppose any real distinction of the operations which 
we discriminate by different names. Thought and 
volition can no more be exerted apart, than the sides 
and angles of a square can exist separately from each 
other.— H. 

+ This, is a singular misapprehension. The divi. 
sion in question, I make bold to sav, ntver was 
proposed by any philosopher as a psychological dis. 
tribution of the cognitive faculties in general : on 
the contrary, it is only a logical distribution of.that 
section of the cognitive faculties which we. denomi- 
nate discursive, as those alone which are proximately 
concerned in the process of reasoning — or thought, in 
its strictest signification.— H. 



[87, 68] 



chap, vii.] DIVISION OF THE POWERS OF THE iMIND. 



243 



It may be observed that, without appre- 
hension of the objects concerning which 
we judge, there can be no judgment; as 
little can there be reasoning without both 
apprehension and judgment : these three 
operations, therefore, are not independent 
of each other. The 1 second includes the 
first, and the third includes both the first 
and second ; but the first may be exer- 
cised without either of the other two.* It 
is on that account called simple apprehen- 
sion ,• that is, apprehension unaccompanied 
with any judgment about the object appre- 
hended. This simple apprehension of an 
object is, in common language, called having 
a notion, or having a conception of the ob- 
ject, and by late authors is called having 
an idea of it. In speaking, it is expressed 
by a word, or by a part of a proposition, 
without that composition and structure 
which makes a complete sentence; as a 
man, a man of fortune; Such words, taken 
by themselves, signify simple apprehen- 
sions. They neither affirm nor [69] deny; 
they imply no judgment or opinion of the 
thing signified by them ; and, therefore, 
cannot be said to be either true or false. 

The second operation in this division is 
judgment ; in which, say the philosophers, 
there must be two objects of thought com- 
pared, and some agreement or disagree- 
ment, or, in general, some relation discerned 
between them ; in consequence of which, 
there is an opinion or belief of that relation 
which we discern. This operation is ex- 
pressed in speech by a proposition, in which 
some relation between the things compared 
is affirmed or denied : as when we say, All 
men are fallible. 

Truth and falsehood are qualities which 
belong to judgment only ; or to proposi- 
tions by which judgment is expressed. 
Every judgment, every opinion, and every 
proposition, is either true or false. But 
words which neither affirm nor deny any- 
thing, can have neither of those qualities ; 
and the same may be said of simple appre- 
hensions, which are signified by such words. 

The third operation is reasoning ; in 
which, from two or more judgments, we 
draw a conclusion. 

This division of our intellectual powers 
corresponds perfectly with the account com- 
monly given by philosophers, of the suc- 
cessive steps by which the mind proceeds 
in the acquisition of its knowledge ; which 
are these three : First, By the senses, or 
by other means, it is furnished with various 

• This is, not correct. Apprehension is a- impos. 
sible without judgment, as judgment is impossible 
without apprehension. The apprehension of a thing 
or notion, is only realized in the mental affirmation 
that the concept ideally exists, and this affirmation is 
a judgment. In fact, all consciousness supposes a 
judgment, as all consciousness supposes a discrimina- 
tion.— H. 

[69-71] 



simple apprehensions, notions, or ideas. 
These are the materials which nature gives 
it to work upon ; and from the simple ideas 
it is furnished with by nature, it forms 
various others more complex. Secondly, 
By comparing its ideas, and by perceiving 
their agreements and disagreements, it 
forms its judgments. And, Lastly, From 
two or more judgments, it deduces con- 
clusions of reasoning. 

Now, if all our knowledge is got by a 
procedure of this kind, [70] certainly the 
threefold division of the powers of under- 
standing, into simple apprehension, judg- 
ment, and reasoning, is the most natural 
and the most proper that can be devised. 
This theory and that division are so closely 
connected that it is difficult to judge which 
of them has given rise to the other ; and 
they must stand or fall together. But, if 
all our knowledge is not got by a process 
of this kind — if there are other avenues 
of knowledge besides the comparing our 
ideas, and perceiving their agreements and 
disagreements — it is probable that there may 
be operations of the understanding which 
cannot be properly reduced under any of 
the three that have been explained. 

Let us consider some of the most familiar 
operations of our minds, and see to which 
of the three they belong. I begin with 
consciousness. I know that I think, and 
this of all knowledge is the most certain. 
Is that operation of my mind which gives 
me this certain knowledge, to be called 
simple apprehension ? No, surely. Simple 
apprehension neither affirms nor denies. 
It will not be said that it is by reason- 
ing that I know that I think. It re- 
mains, therefore, that it must be by judg- 
ment — that is, according to the account 
given of judgment, by comparing two ideas, 
and perceiving the agreement between 
them. But what are the ideas compared ? 
They must be the idea of myself, and the 
idea of thought, for they are the terms of 
the proposition I think. According to this 
account, then, first, I have the idea of my- 
self and the idea of thought ; then, by com- 
paring these two ideas, I perceive that I 
think. 

Let any man who is capable of reflection 
judge for himself, whether it is by an opera- 
tion of this land that he comes to be con- 
vinced that he thinks ? To me it appears 
evident, that the conviction I have that I 
think, is not got in this way ; and, therefore, 
I conclude, either that consciousness is not 
judgment, or that judgment is not rightly 
defined to be the perception of some agree- 
ment oi disagreement between two ideas. 

The perception of an object by my 

senses is another operation of [71] the 

understanding. 1 would know whether it 

be simple apprehension, or judgment, or 

it 2 



244 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



reasoning. It is not simple apprehension, 
because I am persuaded of the existence of 
the object as much as I could be by demon- 
stration. It is not judgment, if by judg- 
ment be meant the comparing ideas, and 
perceiving their agreements or disagree- 
ments. It is not reasoning, because those 
who cannot reason can perceive. 

I find the same difficulty in classing me- 
mory under any of the operations men- 
tioned. 

There is not a more fruitful source of 
error in this branch of philosophy, than 
divisions of things which are taken to be 
complete when they are not really so. To 
make a perfect division of any class of 
things, a man ought to have the whole 
under his view at once. But the greatest 
capacity very often is not sufficient for 
this. Something is left out which did not 
come under the philosopher's view when 
he made his division : and to suit this to 
the division, it must be made what nature 
never made it. This has been so common 
a fault of philosophers, that one who would 
avoid error ought to be suspicious of divi- 
sions, though long received, and of great 
authority, especially when they are grounded 
on a theory that may be called in question. 
In a subject imperfectly known, we ought 
not to pretend to perfect divisions, but to 
leave room for such additions or alterations 
as a more perfect view of the subject may 
afterwards suggest. 

I shall not, therefore, attempt a com- 
plete enumeration of the powers of the hu- 
man understanding. I shall only mention 
those which I propose to explain ; and they 
are the following : — 

1st, The powers we have by means of 
our external senses. 2dly, Memory. 3dly, 
Conception. 4thly, The powers of resolv- 
ing and analysing complex objects, and 
compounding those that are more simple. 
bthly, Judging. 6lhly, Reasoning. Jthly, 
Taste. 8thly, Moral Perception ;* and, last 
of all, Consciousness. + [72] 



CHAPTER VIII. 

. OF SOCIAL OPERATIONS OF MIND. 

There is another division of the powers 
of the mind, which, though it has been, 
ought not to be overlooked by writers on 
this subject, because it has a real founda- 
tion in nature. Some operations of our 
minds, from their very nature, are social, 
others are solitary. 



• Moral Perception is treated under the Active 
Powers, in Essay V. — H. 

t Consciousness obtains only an incidental consi- 
deration, under Judgment, in the Fifth Chapter of 
the Sixth Essay.— H. 



By the first, I understand such operations 
as necessarily suppose an intercourse with 
some other intelligent being. A man may 
understand and will ; he may apprehend, 
and judge, and reason, though he should 
know of no intelligent being in the universe 
besides himself. But, when he asks inform- 
ation, or receives it ; when he bears tes- 
timony, or receives the testimony of an- 
other ; when he asks a favour, or accepts 
one ; when he gives a command to his ser- 
vant, or receives one from a superior ; when 
he plights his faith in a promise or con- 
tract — these are acts of social intercourse 
between intelligent beings, and can have no 
place in solitude. They suppose under- 
standing and will ; but they suppose some- 
thing more, which is neither understanding 
nor will ; that is, society with other intelli-- 
gent beings. They may be called intellec- 
tual, because they can only be in intellectual 
beings ; but they are neither simple appre- 
hension, nor judgment, nor reasoning, nor are 
they any combination of these operations. 

To ask a question, is as simple an opera- 
tion as to judge or to reason ; yet it is 
neither judgment nor reasoning, nor simple 
apprehension, nor is it any composition of 
these. Testimony is neither simple appre- 
hension, nor judgment, nor reasoning. The 
same may be said of a promise, or of a con- 
tract. These acts of mind are perfectly 
understood by every man of common under- 
standing ; but, when philosophers attempt 
to bring them within the pale of their divi- 
sions, by analysing them, they find inex- 
plicable mysteries, [73] and even contradic- 
tions, in them. One may see an instance 
of this, of many that might be mentioned, 
in Mr Hume's " Enquiry concerning the 
Principles of Morals," § 3, part 2, note, 
near the end. 

The attempts of philosophers to reduce 
the social operations under the common 
philosophical divisions, resemble very much 
the attempts of some philosophers to re- 
duce all our social affections to certain 
modifications of self-love. The Author of 
our being intended us to be social beings, 
and has, for that end, given us social intel- 
lectual powers, as well as social affections.* 
Both are original parts of our constitution, 
and the exertions of both no less natural 
than the exertions of those powers that are 
solitary and selfish. 

Our social intellectual operations, as well 
as our social affections, appear very early 
in life, before we are capable of reasoning ; 
yet both suppose a conviction of the exist- 
ence of other intelligent beings. When a 
child asks a question of his nurse, this act 

• " Man," says Aristotle, " is, by nature, more 
political than any bee or ant." And, in another 
work, '* Man is the sweetest thing to man" — uvB^u- 
tiai r,$is'ov ecvQ^anro; — H. 

{ 72, 73] 



chap, viii.] OF SOCIAL OPERATIONS OF MIND. 



245 



of his mind supposes not only a desire to 
know what he asks ; it supposes, likewise, 
a conviction that the nurse is an intelligent 
being, to whom he can communicate his 
thoughts, and who can communicate her 
thoughts to him. How he came by this 
conviction so early, is a question of some 
importance in the knowledge of the human 
mind, and, therefore, worthy of the con- 
sideration of philosophers. But they seem 
to have giv^en no attention, either to this 
early conviction, or to those operations of 
mind which suppose it. Of this we shall 
have occasion to treat afterwards. 

All languages are fitted to express the 
social as well as the solitary operations of 
the mind. It may indeed be affirmed, that, 
to express the former, is the primary and 
direct intention of language. A man who 
had no intercourse with any other intelli- 
gent being, would never think of language. 
He would be as mute as the beasts of the 
field ; even more so, because they have 
some degree of social intercourse with one 
another, and some of them [74] with man. 
When language is once learned, it may be 
useful even in our solitary meditations ; and 
by clothing our thoughts with words, we 
may have a firmer hold of them. But 
this was not its first intention ; and the 
structure of every language shews that it is 
not intended solely for this purpose. 

In every language, a question, a com- 
mand, a promise, which are social acts, can 
be expressed as easily and as properly as 
judgment, which is a solitary act. The ex- 
pression of the last has been honoured with 
a particular name ; it is called a proposition ; 
it has been an object of great attention to i 



philosophers ; it has been analysed into its 
very elements of subject predicate, and co- 
pula. All the various modifications of these, 
and of propositions which are compounded of 
them, have been anxiously examined in 
many voluminous tracts. The expression 
of a question, of a command, or of a pro- 
mise, is as capable of being analysed as a 
proposition is ; but we do not find that this 
has been attempted ; we have not so much 
as given them a name different from the 
operations which they express. 

Why have speculative men laboured so 
anxiously to analyse our solitary operations, 
and given so little attention to the social ? 
I know no other reason but this, that, in 
the divisions that have been made of the 
mind's operations, the social have been 
omitted, and thereby thrown behind the 
curtain. 

In all languages, the second person of 
verbs, the pronoun of the second person, and 
the vocative case in nouns, are appropriated 
to the expression of social operations of mind, 
and could never have had place in language 
but for this purpose : nor is it a good 
argument against this observation, that, by 
a rhetorical figure, we sometimes address 
persons that are absent, or even inanimated 
beings, in the second person. For it ought 
to be remembered, that all figurative ways 
of using words or phrases suppose a natural 
and literal meaning of them.* [75] 



* What, throughout this chapter, is implied, ought 
to have been explicitly stated — that language 19 natu. 
ral to man ; and consequently the faculty of tipeech 
ought to have been enumerated among the mental 
powers. — H. 



ESSAY II. 



OF THE POWERS WE HAVE BY MEANS OF OUR 
EXTERNAL SENSES. 



CHAPTER I. 

OP THE ORGANS OF SENSE. 

Of all the operations of our minds, the 
perception of external objects is the most 
familiar. The senses come to maturity 
even in infancy, when other powers have 
not yet sprung up. They are common to 
us with brute animals, and furnish us with 
the objects about which our other powers 
are the most frequently employed. We 
find it easy to attend to their operations ; 
and, because they are familiar, the names 
which properly belong to them are applied 
[74, 75] 



to other powers which are thought to re- 
semble them. For these reasons, they claim 
to be first considered. 

The perception of external objects is one 
main link of that mysterious chain which 
connects the material world with the intel- 
lectual. We shall find many things in this 
operation unaccountable ; sufficient to con- 
vince us that we know but little of our own 
frame ; and that a perfect comprehension 
of our mental powers, and of the manner of 
their operation, is beyond the reach of our 
understanding. 

In perception, there are impressions upon 
the organs of sense, the nerves, and brain, 



246 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[jiSSAY II, 



which, by the laws of our nature, are fol- 
lowed by certain operations of mind. These 
two things are apt to be confounded ; but 
ought most carefully to be distinguished. 
Some philosophers, without good reason, 
have concluded, that the [76] impressions 
made on the body are the proper efficient 
cause of perception. Others, with as little 
reason, have concluded that impressions are 
made on the mind similar to those made on 
the body. From these mistakes many others 
have arisen. The wrong notions men have 
rashly taken up with regard to the senses, 
have led to wrong notions with regard to 
other powers which are conceived to resemble 
them. Many important powers of mind 
have, especially of late, been called internal 
senses, from a supposed resemblance to the 
external — such as, the sense of beauty, the 
sense of harmony, the moral sense.* And 
it is to be apprehended that errors, with 
regard to the external, have, from analogy, 
led to similar errors with regard to the 
internal ; it is, therefore, of some conse- 
quence, even with regard to other branches 
of our subject, to have just notions concern- 
ing the external senses. 

In order to this, we shall begin with some 
observations on the organs of sense, and on 
the impressions which in perception are 
made upon them, and upon the nerves and 
brain. 

We perceive no external object but by 
means of certain bodily organs which God 
has given us for that purpose. The Su- 
preme Being who made us, and placed us 
in this world, hath given us such powers of 
mind as he saw to be suited to our state 
and rank in his creation. He has given us 
the power of perceiving many objects around 
us — the sun, moon, and stars, the earth and 
sea, and a variety of animals, vegetables, 
and inanimate bodies. But our power of 
perceiving these objects is limited in various 
ways, and particularly in this — that, with- 
out the organs of the several senses, we 
perceive no external object. We cannot 
see without eyes, nor hear without ears ; it 
is not only necessary that we should have 
these organs, but that they should be in a 
sound and natural state. There are many 
disorders of the eye that cause total blind- 
ness ; others that impair the powers of vi- 
sion, without destroying it altogether : and 
the same may be said of the organs of all 
the other senses. [77] 

All this is so well known from experience, 
that it needs no proof ; but it ought to be 
observed, that we know it from experience 
only. We can give no reason for it, but 
that such is the will of our Maker. No 
man can shew it to be impossible to the 
Supreme Being to have given us the power of 

* He refers to Hutcheson.— H. 



perceiving external objects without such or- 
gans.* We have reason tobelieve that, when 
we put off these bodies and all the organs 
belonging to them, our perceptive powers 
shall rather be improved than destroyed or 
impaired. We have reason to believe that 
the Supreme Being perceives everything in 
a much more perfect manner than we do, 
without bodily organs. We have reason to 
believe that there are other created beings 
endowed with powers of perception more 
perfect and more extensive than ours, with- 
out any such organs as we find necessary. 

We ought not, therefore, to conclude, 
that such bodily organs are, in their own 
nature, necessary to perception ; but rather 
that, by the will of God, our power of per- 
ceiving external objects is limited and cir- 
cumscribed by our organs of sense ; so that 
we perceive objects in a certain manner, 
and in certain circumstances, and in no 
other, -f 

If a man was shut up in a dark room, so 
that he could see nothing but through one 
small hole in the shutter of a window, 
would he conclude that the hole was the 
cause of his seeing, and that it is impos- 
sible to see any other way ? Perhaps, if he 
had never in his life seen but in this way, 
he might be apt to think so ; but the con- 
clusion is rash and groundless. He sees, 
because God has given him the power of 
seeing ; and he sees only through this small 
hole, because his power of seeing is circum- 
scribed by impediments on all other hands. 

Another necessary caution in this matter 
is, that we ought not to confound the or- 
gans of perception with the being that per- 
ceives. Perception must be the act of some 
being that perceives. The eye [78] is not 
that which sees ; it is only the organ by which 
we see.J The ear is not that which hears, 
but the organ by which we hear ; and so of 
the rest.§ 

A man cannot see the satellites of Jupiter 
but by a telescope. Does he conclude from 
this, that it is the telescope that sees those 
stars ? By no means — such a conclusion 
would be absurd. It is no less absurd to 

* However astonishing, it is now proved beyond 
all rational doubt, that, in certain abnormal stales 
of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible, 
through other than the ordinary channels of the 
senses. — H 

t The doctrine of Plato and of many other phi. 
losophers. Reid ought, however, to have said, 
limited to, instead of " by our organs of sense :'' for, 
if the body be viewed as the prison of the soul, the 
senses must be viewed at least as partial outlets. — 
H. 

t Aletp9ciX/jtMii,ou» o$3*.\fx.o~;. says Plato, followed 
by a host of philosophers, comparing the senses to 
windows of the mind. — H. 

§ " '1 he mind Fees," says Epicharmus — " the mind 
hears, all else is deaf and blind" — a saying alluded to 
as proverbial b" Aristotle, in a passage to the same 
effect, which cannot adequately be translated :— 
\.4i(ic-8i7<r& a'i'ffSvtrij diuvoia-f, z&Oacxie ocyairSrirer 
T.iisv lx u > «*■«■'{ ti^trrai to, N S r o«a, zet) tSf 
it » eC it- This has escaped the commentators, — H. 
Seep. 878, n. f76~78] 



chap, ii.] OF IMPRESSIONS ON THE ORGANS, &c. 



247 



conclude that it is the eye that sees, or 
the ear that hears. The telescope is an 
artificial organ of sight, but it sees not. 
The eye is a natural organ of sight, by 
which we see ; but the natural organ sees 
as little as the artificial. 

The eye is a machine most admirably 
contrived for refracting the rays of light, 
and forming a distinct picture of objects 
upon the retina ; but it sees neither the 
object nor the picture. It can form the 
picture after it is taken out of the head ; 
but no vision ensues. Even when it is in 
its proper place, and perfectly sound, it is 
well known that an obstruction in the optic 
nerve takes away vision, though the eye 
has performed all that belongs to ifc, 

If anything more were necessary to be 
said on a point so evident, we might ob- 
serve that, if the faculty of seeing were in 
the eye, that of hearing in the ear, and so 
of the other senses, the necessary conse- 
quence of this would be, that the thinking 
principle, which I call myself, is not one, 
but many. But this is contrary to the ir- 
resistible conviction of every man. When 
I say I see, I hear, I feel, I remember, 
this implies that it is one and the same self 
that performs all these operations ; and, as 
it would be absurd to say that my memory, 
another man's imagination, and a third 
man's reason, may make one individual 
intelligent being, it would be equally ab- 
surd to say that one piece of matter see- 
ing, another hearing, and a third feeling, 
may make one and the same percipient 
being. 

These sentiments are not new ; they have 
occurred to thinking men from early ages. 
Cicero, in his " Tusculan Questions," Book 
I., chap. 20, has expressed them very dis- 
tinctly. Those who choose may consult the 
passage.* [79] 



CHAPTER II. 

CF THE IMPRESSIONS ON THE ORGANS, NERVES, 
AND BRAINS. 

A second law of our nature regarding 
perception is, that we perceive no object, 
unless some impression is made upon the 
organ of sense, either by the immediate 
application of the object, or by some medium 
which passes between the object and the 
organ. 

In two of our senses — to wit, touch and 
taste — there must be an immediate applica- 
tion of the object to the organ. In the 
other three, the object is perceived at a dis- 
tance, but still by means of a medium, by 



* Cicero says nothing on this head that had not 
been said before him by the Greek philosophers.— H. 



which some impression is made upon the 
organ.* 

The effluvia of bodies drawn into the 
nostrils with the breath, are the medium of 
smell ; the undulations of the air are the* 
medium of hearing ; and the rays of ligb. 
passing from visible objects to the eye, ar 
the medium of sight. We see no object 
unless rays of light come from it to the eye. 
We hear not the sound of any body, unless 
the vibrations of some elastic medium, oc- 
casioned by the tremulous motion of the 
sounding body, reach our ear. We per- 
ceive no smell, unless the effluvia of the 
smelling body enter into the nostrils. We 
perceive no taste, unless the sapid body be 
applied to the tongue, or some part of the 
organ of taste. Nor do we perceive any 
tangible quality of a body, unless it touch 
the hands, or some part c» our bodies. 

These are facts known from experience 
to hold universally and invariably, both in 
men and brutes. By this law of our na- 
ture, our powers of perceiving external ob- 
jects, are farther limited and circumscribed. 
Nor can we give any other reason for this, 
than [80] that it is the will of our Maker, who 
knows best what powers, and what degrees 
of them, are suited to our state. We were 
once in a state, I mean in the womb, wherein 
our powers of perception were more limited 
than in -the present, and, in a future state, 
they may be more enlarged. 

It is likewise a law of our nature, that, 
in order to our perceiving objects, the im- 
pressions made upon the organs of sense 
must be communicated to the nerves, and 
by them to the brain. This is perfectly 
known to those who know anything of ana- 
tomy. 

The nerves are fine cords,' which pass 
from the brain, or from the spinal marrow, 
which is a production of the brain, to all 
parts of the body, dividing into smaller 
branches as they proceed, until at last they 
escape our eyesight : and it is found by 
experience, that all the voluntary and in- 
voluntary motions of the body are performed 
by their means. When the nerves that 
serve any limb, are cut, or tied hard, we 
have then no more power to move that limb 
than if it was no part of the body. 

As there are nerves that serve the mus- 
cular motions, so there are others that serve 
the several senses ; and as without the for- 
mer we cannot move a limb, so without the 
latter we can have no perception. 

* This distinction of a mediate and immediate ob- 
ject, or of an object and a medium, in perception, is 
inaccurate, and a source of sad confusion. We per- 
ceive, and can perceive, nothing but what is in rela- 
tion to the organ, and nothing is in relation to the 
organ that is not present to it. All thesenses are, in 
fact, modifications of touch, as Democritus of old 
taught. We reach the distant reality, not by sense, 
not by perception, but by inference. Reid, how. 
ever, in this only follows his predecessora — H. 



[79, 80] 



248 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



This train of machinery the wisdom of 
God has made necessary to our perceiving 
objects. Various parts of the body concur 
to it, and each has its own function. First, 
The object, either immediately, or by some 
medium, must make an impression on the 
organ. The organ serves only as a medium 
by which an impression is made on the 
nerve ; and the nerve serves as a medium 
to make an impression upon the brain. 
Here the material part ends ; at least we 
can trace it no farther ; the rest is all in- 
tellectual.* 

The proof of these impressions upon the 
nerves and brain in [81] perception is this, 
that, from many observations and experi- 
ments, it is found that, when the organ of 
any sense is perfectly sound, and has the 
impression made upon it by the object ever 
so strongly, yet, if the nerve which serves 
that organ be cut or tied hard, there is no 
perception ; and it is well known that dis- 
orders in the brain deprive us of the power 
of perception when both the organ and its 
nerve are sound. 

There is, therefore, sufficient reason to 
conclude that, in perception, the object pro- 
duces some change in the organ ; that the 
organ produces some change upon the 
nerve ; and that the nerve produces some 
change in the brain. And we give the 
name of an impression to those changes, 
because we have not a name more proper to 
express, in a general manner, any change 
produced in a body, by an external cause, 
without specifying the nature of that 
change. Whether it be pressure, or at- 
traction, or repulsion, or vibration, or some- 
thing unknown, for which we have no 
name, still it may be called an impression. 
But, with regard to the particular kind of 
this Ghange or impression, philosophers 
have never been able to discover anything 
at all. 

But, whatever be the nature of those im- 
pressions upon the organs, nerves, and 
brain, we perceive nothing without them. 
Experience informs that it is so ; but we 
cannot give a reason why it is so. In the 
constitution of man, perception, by fixed 
laws of nature, is connected with those im- 
pressions ; but we can discover no neces- 
sary connection. The Supreme Being has 
seen fit to limit our power of perception ; so 
that we perceive not without such impres- 
sions; and this is all we know of the 
matter. 

This, however, we have reason to con- 

* There can be no doubt that the whole organism 
of the sense, from periphery to centre, must co-operate 
simultaneously in perception ; but there is no rea- 
son to place the mind at the central extremity alone, 
and to hold that not only a certain series of organic 
changes, but a sensation, must precede the mental 
cognition. This is mere hypothesis, and opposed to 
the testimony of consciousness. — K. 



elude in general — that, as the impressions on 
the organs, nerves, and brain, correspond 
exactly to the nature aDd conditions of the 
objects by which they are made, so our 
perceptions and sensations correspond to 
those impressions, and vary in kind, and in 
degree, as they vary. [82] Without thisexact 
correspondence, the information we receive 
by our senses would not only be imperfect, 
as it undoubtedly is, but would be fallacious, 
which we have no reason to think it is. 



CHAPTER III. 

HYPOTHESES CONCERNING THE NERVES AND 
BRAIN. 

We are informed by anatomists, that, al- 
though the two coats which inclose a nerve, 
and which it derives from the coats of the 
brain, are tough and elastic, yet the nerve 
itself has a very small degree of consistence, 
being almost like marrow. It has, how- 
ever, a fibrous texture, and may be divided 
and subdivided, till its fibres escape our 
senses ; and, as we know so very little about 
the texture of the nerves, there is great 
room left for those who choose to indulge 
themselves in conjecture. 

The ancients conjectured that the ner- 
vous fibres are fine tubes, filled with a very 
subtile spirit, or vapour, which they called 
animal spirits ; that the brain is a gland, 
by which the animal spirits are secreted 
from the finer part of the blood, and their 
continual waste repaired ; and that it is by 
these animal spirits that the nerves perform 
their functions. Des Cartes has shewn 
how, by these animal spirits, going and re- 
turning in the nerves, muscular motion, 
perception, memory, and imagination, are 
effected. All this he has described as dis- 
tinctly as if he had been an eye-witness of 
all those operations. But it happens that 
the tubular structure of the nerves was 
never perceived by the human eye, nor 
shewn by the nicest injections ; and all that 
has been said about animal spirits, through 
more than fifteen centuries, is mere con- 
jecture. 

Dr Briggs, who was Sir Isaac Newton's 
master in anatomy, was the first, as far as 
I know, who advanced a new system 
concerning [83] the nerves.* He conceived 
them to be solid filaments of prodigious 



* Briggs was not the first. The Jesuit, Hoti~. 
ratus Fabry, had before him denied the old hypothe- 
sis of spirits ; and the new hypothesis of cerebral 
fibres, and fibrils, by which he explains the phasno- 
raena of sense, imagination and memory, is not only 
the first, but perhaps the most ingenious of the class 
that has been proposed. Yet the very name of Fabry 
is wholly unnoticed by those historians of philosophy 
who do not deem it sui.erflucus to dwell on the tire, 
some reveries of Briggs, Hartlev, ;md Bonnet. — H. 

[81.83] 



chap, in.] HYPOTHESES CONCERNING THE NERVES, &i 



249 



tenuity ; and this opinion, as it accords bet- 
ter with observation, seems to have been 
more generally received since his time. As 
to the manner of performing their office, 
Dr Briggs thought that, like musical cords, 
they have vibrations differing according to 
their length and tension. They seem, how- 
ever, very unfit for this purpose, on account 
of their want of tenacity, their moisture, 
and being through their whole length in 
contact with moist substances ; so that, al- 
though Dr Briggs wrote a book upon this 
system, called Nova Visionis Theoria, it 
seems not to have been much followed. 

Sir Isaac Newton, in all his philosophical 
writings, took great care to distinguish his 
doctrines, which he pretended to prove by 
just induction, from his conjectures, which 
were to stand or fall according as future 
experiments and observations should esta- 
blish or refute them. His conjectures he 
has put in the form of queries, that they 
might not be received as truths, but be 
inquired into, and determined according to 
the evidence to be found for or against 
them. Those who mistake his queries for 
a part of his doctrine, do him great injus- 
tice, and degrade him to the rank of the 
common herd of philosophers, who have in 
all ages adulterated philosophy, by mixing 
conjecture with truth, and their own fancies 
with the oracles of Nature. Among other 
queries, this truly great philosopher pro- 
posed this, Whether there may not be an 
elastic medium, or aether, immensely more 
rare than air, which pervades all bodies, 
and which is the cause of gravitation ; of 
the refraction and reflection of the rays of 
light ; of the transmission of heat, through 
spaces void of air ; and of many other phe- 
nomena ? In the 23d query subjoined to his 
" Optics," he puts this question with regard 
to the impressions made on the nerves and 
brain in perception, Whether vision is 
effected chiefly by the vibrations of this 
medium, excited in the bottom of the eye 
by the rays of light, and propagated along 
the solid, pellucid, and uniform capillaments 
of the optic nerve ? And whether hearing 
is effected [84] by the vibrations of this or 
some other medium, excited by the tremor 
of the air in the auditory nerves, and pro- 
pagated along the solid, pellucid, and uni- 
form capillaments of those nerves ? And 
so with regard to the other senses. 

What Newton only proposed as a matter 
to be inquired into, Dr Hartley conceived 
to have such evidence, that, in his " Ob- 
servations on Man," he has deduced, in a 
mathematical form, a very ample system 
concerning the faculties of the mind, from 
the doctrine of vibrations, joined with that 
of association. 

His notion of the vibrations excited in 
the nerves, is expressed in Propositions 4 
[84, 85] 



and 5 of the first part of his " Observa- 
tions on Man." " Prop. 4. External objects 
impressed on the senses occasion, first in 
the nerves on which they are impressed, 
and then in the brain, vibrations of the 
small, and, as one may say, infinitesimal 
medullary particles. Prop. 5. The vibra- 
tions mentioned in the last proposition are 
excited, propagated, and kept up, partly by 
the aether — that is, by a very subtile elastic 
fluid ; partly by the uniformity, continuity, 
softness, and active powers of the medullary 
substance of the brain, spinal marrow, and 
nerves." 

The modesty and diffidence with which 
Dr Hartley offers his system to the world — 
by desiring his reader " to expect nothing 
but hints and conjectures in difficult and 
obscure matters, and a short detail of the 
principal reasons and evidences in those 
that are clear ; by acknowledging, that he 
shall not be able to execute, with any ac- 
curacy, the proper method of philosophising, 
recommended and followed by Sir Isaac 
Newton ; and that he will attempt a sketch 
only for the benefit of future enquirers"— 
seem to forbid any criticism upon it. One 
cannot, without reluctance, criticise what is 
proposed in such a manner, and with so 
good intention ; yet, as the tendency of this 
system of vibrations is to make all the oper- 
ations of the mind mere mechanism, depend- 
ent [85] on the laws of matter and motion, 
and, as it has been held forth by its vota- 
ries, as in a manner demonstrated, I shall 
make some remarks on that part of the sys- 
tem which relates to the impressions made 
on the nerves and brain in perception. 

It may be observed, in general, that Dr 
Hartley's work consists of a chain of pro- 
positions, with their proofs and corollaries, 
digested in good order, and in a scientific 
form. A great part of them, however, are, 
as he candidly acknowledges, conjectures 
and hints only ; yet these are mixed with 
the propositions legitimately proved, with- 
out any distinction. Corollaries are drawn 
from them, and other propositions grounded 
upon them, which, all taken together, make 
up a system. A system of this kind re- 
sembles a chain, of which some links are 
abundantly strong, others very weak. The 
strength of the chain is determined by that 
of the weakest links ; for, if they give way, 
the whole falls to pieces, and the weight 
supported by it falls to the ground. 

Philosophy has been, in all ages, adul- 
terated by hypotheses ; that is, by systems 
built partly on facts, and much upon con- 
jecture. It is pity that a man of Dr Hart- 
ley's knowledge and candour should have 
followed the multitude in this fallacious 
tract, after expressing his approbation of 
the proper method of philosophising, pointed 
out by Bacon and Newton. The last con- 



250 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



£essay u, 



sidered it as a reproach when his system 
was called his hypothesis ; and says, with 
disdain of such imputation, Hypotheses non 
Jingo. And it is very strange that Dr 
Hartley should not only follow such a me- 
thod of philosophising himself, but that he 
should direct others in their inquiries to 
follow it. So he does in Proposition 87, 
Part I., where he deduces rules for the 
ascertainment of truth, from the rule of 
false, in arithmetic, and from the art of 
decyphering ; and in other places. 

As to the vibrations and vibratiuncles, 
whether of an elastic aether, or of the in- 
finitesimal particles of the brain and nerves, 
there [86] may be such things for what we 
know ; and men may rationally inquire 
whether they can find any evidence of their 
existence ; but, while we have no proof of 
their existence, to apply them to the solu- 
tion of phaenomena, and to build a system 
upon them, is what I conceive we call build- 
ing a castle in the air. 

When men pretend to account for any 
of the operations of Nature, the causes 
assigned by them ought, as Sir Isaac New- 
ton has taught us, to have two conditions, 
otherwise they are good for nothing. First, 
They ought to be true, to have a real exist- 
ence, and not to be barely conjectured to 
exist, without proof. Secondly, They ought 
to be sufficient to produce the effect. 

As to the existence of vibratory motions 
in the medullary substance of the nerves 
and brain, the evidence produced is this : 
First, It is observed that the sensations of 
seeing and hearing, and some sensations of 
touch, have some short duration and con- 
tinuance. Secondly, Though there be no 
direct evidence that the sensations of taste 
and smell, and the greater part of these of 
touch, have the like continuance, yet, says 
the author, analogy would incline one to 
believe that they must resemble the sensa- 
tions of sight and hearing in this particular. 
Thirdly, The continuance of all our sensa- 
tions being thus established, it follows, that 
external objects impress vibratory motions 
on the medullary substance of the nerves 
and brain ; because no motion, besides a 
vibratory one, can reside in any part for a 
moment of time. 

This is the chain of proof, in which the 
first link is strong, being confirmed by ex- 
perience ; the second is very weak ; and the 
third still weaker. For other kinds of mo- 
tion, besides that of vibration, may have 
some continuance — such as rotation, bending 
or unbending of a spring, and perhaps others 
which we are unacquainted with ; nor do 
we know whether it is motion that is pro- 
duced in the nerves — it may be pressure, 
attraction, repulsion, or something we do 
not know. This, indeed, is the common 
refuge of all hypotheses, [87] that we know 



no other way in which the phsenomena may 
be produced, and, therefore, they must be 
produced in this way. There is, therefore, 
no proof of vibrations in the infinitesimal 
particles of the brain and nerves. 

It may be thought that the existence of 
an elastic vibrating aether stands on a firmer 
foundation, having the authority of Sir 
Isaac Newton. But it ought to be observed 
that, although this great man had formed 
conjectures about this aether near fifty 
years before he died, and had it in his eye 
during that long space as a subject of in- 
quiry, yet it does not appear that he ever 
found any convincing proof of its existence, 
but considered it to the last as a question 
whether there be such an aether or not. 
In the premonition to the reader, prefixed 
to the second edition of his " Optics," 
anno 1717> he expresses himself thus with 
regard to it : — " Lest any one should think 
that I place gravity among the essential 
properties of bodies, I have subjoined one 
question concerning its cause ; a question, 
I say, for I do not hold it as a thing estab- 
lished." If, therefore, we regard the 
authority of Sir Isaac Newton, we ought 
to hold the existence of such an aether as a 
matter not established by proof, but to be 
examined into by experiments ; and I have 
never heard that, since his time, any new 
evidence has been found of its existence. 

" But," says Dr Hartley, " supposing 
the existence of the aether, and of its pro- 
perties, to be destitute of all direct evidence, 
still, if it serves to account for a great 
variety of phaenomena, it will have an in- 
direct evidence in its favour by this means." 
There never was an hypothesis invented by 
an ingenious man which has not this evi- 
dence in its favour. The vortices of Des 
Cartes, the sylphs and gnomes of Mr Pope, 
serve to account for a great variety of 
phaenomena. 

When a man has, with labour and in- 
genuity, wrought up an hypothesis into a 
system, he contracts a fondness for it, 
which is apt [88] to warp the best judgment. 
This, I humbly think, appears remarkably 
in Dr Hartley. In his preface, he declares 
his approbation of the method of philoso- 
phising recommended and followed by Sir 
Isaac Newton ; but, having first deviated 
from this method in his practice, he is 
brought at last to justify this deviation in 
theory, and to bring arguments in defence 
of a method diametrically opposite to it. 
" We admit," says he, " the key of a cypher 
to be a true one when it explains the cypher 
completely." I answer, To find the key 
requires an understanding equal or supe- 
rior to that which made the cypher. This 
instance, therefore, will then be"*in point, 
when he who attempts to decypher the 
works of Nature by an hypothesis, has an 

[86-88] 



chap, in.] HYPOTHESES CONCERNING THE NERVES, &c. 251 



understanding equal or superior to that 
which made them. The votaries of hypo- 
theses have often been challenged to shew 
one useful discovery in the works of Nature 
that was ever made in that way. If in- 
stances of this kind could be produced, we 
ought to conclude that Lord Bacon and 
Sir Isaac Newton have done great disser- 
vice to philosophy by what they have said 
against hypotheses. But, if no such in- 
stance can be produced, we must conclude, 
with those great men, that every system 
which pretends to account for the phseno- 
mena of Nature by hypotheses or conjecture, 
is spurious and illegitimate, and serves only 
to flatter the pride of man with a vain con- 
ceit of knowledge which he has not attained. 

The author tells us, "that any hypo- 
thesis that has so much plausibility as to 
explain a considerable number of facts, helps 
us to digest these facts in proper order, to 
bring new ones to light, and to make eoc- 
perimenta cruris for the sake of future 
inquirers." 

Let hypotheses be put to any of these 
uses as far as they can serve. Let them 
suggest experiments, or direct our inquiries ; 
but let just induction alone govern our 
belief. 

" The rule of false affords an obvious and 
strong instance of the possibilityof being led, 
with precision and certainty, to a [89] true 
conclusion from a false position. And it is 
of the very essence of algebra to proceed in 
the way of supposition." 

This is true ; but, when brought to jus- 
tify the accounting for natural phsenomena 
by hypotheses, is foreign to the purpose. 
When an unknown number, or any un- 
known quantity, is sought, which must have 
certain conditions, it may be found in a 
scientific manner by the rule of false, or 
by an algebraical analysis ; and, when 
found, may be synthetically demonstrated 
to be the number or the quantity sought, 
by its answering all the conditions required. 
But it is one thing to find a quantity which 
shall have certain conditions ; it is a very 
different thing to find out the laws by which 
it pleases God to govern the world and 
produce the phsenomena which fall under 
our observation. And we can then only 
allow some weight to this argument in favour 
of hypotheses, when it can be shewn that 
the cause of any one pheenomenon in nature 
has been, or can be found, as an unknown 
quantity is, by the rule of false, or by alge- 
braical analysis. This, I apprehend, will 
never be, till the sera arrives, which Dr 
Hartley seems to foretell, " AVhen future 
generations shall put all kinds of evidences 
and enquiries into mathematical forms ; 
and, as it were, reduce Aristotle's ten Ca- 
tegories, and Bishop Wilkin's forty Summa 
Genera to the head of quantity alone, so as 
[89, 90] 



to make mathematics and logic, natural 
history and civil history, natural philoso- 
phy and philosophy of all other kinds, 
coincide omni ex parte." 

Since Sir Isaac Newton laid down the 
rules of philosophising in our inquiries into 
the works of Nature, many philosophers 
have deviated from them in practice ; per- 
haps few have paid that regard to them 
which they deserve. But they have met 
with very general approbation, as being 
founded in reason, and pointing out the 
only path to the knowledge of Nature's 
works. Dr Hartley is the only author I 
have met with who reasons against them, 
and has taken pains to find out arguments 
in defence of the exploded method of hy- 
pothesis. [90] 

Another condition which Sir Isaac New- 
ton requires in the causes of natural things 
assigned by philosophers, is, that they be 
sufficient to account for the phsenomena. 
Vibrations, and vibratiuncles of the me- 
dullary substance of the nerves and brain, 
are assigned by Dr Hartley to account for 
all our sensations and ideas, and, in a word, 
for all the operations of our minds. Let 
us consider very briefly how far they are 
sufficient for that purpose. 

It would be injustice to this author to 
conceive him a materialist. He proposes 
his sentiments with great candour, and they 
ought not to be carried beyond what his 
words express. He thinks it a consequence 
of his theory, that matter, if it can be 
endued with the most simple kinds of sens- 
ation, might arrive at all that intelligence 
of which the human mind is possessed. 
He thinks that his theory overturns all 
the arguments that are usually brought for 
the immateriality of the soul, from the 
subtilty of the internal senses, and of the 
rational faculty ; but he does not take upon 
him to determine whether matter can be 
endued with sensation or no. He even 
acknowledges that matter and motion, 
however subtilly divided and reasoned upon, 
yield nothing more than matter and motion 
still ; and therefore he would not be any 
way interpreted so as to oppose the imma- 
teriality of the soul. 

It would, therefore, be unreasonable to 
require that his theory of vibrations should, 
in the proper sense, account for our sensa- 
tions. It would, indeed, be ridiculous in 
any man to pretend that thought of any kind 
must necessarily result from motion, or 
that vibrations in the nerves must neces- 
sarily produce thought, any more than the 
vibrations of a pendulum. Dr Hartley 
disclaims this way of thinking, and there- 
fore it ought not to be imputed to him. 
All that he pretends is, that, in the human 
constitution, there is a certain connection 
between vibrations in the medullary sub- 



252 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



Qe<?say II. 



stance of the nerves and brain, and tho 
thoughts of the mind ; so that the last de- 
pend entirely upon the first, and every kind 
of thought [91] in the mind arises in conse- 
quence of a corresponding vibration, or 
vibratiuncle in the nerves and brain. Our 
sensations arise from vibrations, and our 
ideas from vibratiuncles, or miniature vibra- 
tions ; and he comprehends, under these 
two words of sensations and ideas, all the 
operations of the mind. 

But how can we expect any proof of the 
connection between vibrations and thought, 
when the existence of such vibrations was 
never proved ? The proof of their connec- 
tion cannot be stronger than the proof of 
their existence ; for, as the author acknow- 
ledges that we cannot infer the existence 
of the thoughts from the existence of the 
vibrations, it is no less evident that we can- 
not infer the existence of vibrations from 
the existence of our thoughts. The exist- 
ence of both must be known before we can 
know their connection. As to the exist- 
ence of our thoughts, we have the evidence 
of consciousness, a kind of evidence that 
never was called in question. But as to 
the existence of vibrations in the medullary 
substance of the nerves and brain, no proof 
has yet been brought. 

All, therefore, we have to expect from 
this hypothesis, is, that in vibrations, con- 
sidered abstractly, there should be a variety 
in kind and degree, which tallies so exactly 
with the varieties of the thoughts they are to 
account for, as may lead us to suspect some 
connection between the one and the other. 
If the divisions and subdivisions of thought 
be found to run parallel with the divisions 
and subdivisions of vibrations, this would 
give that kind of plausibility to the hypo- 
thesis of their connection, which we com- 
monly expect even in a mere hypothesis ; 
but we do not find even this. 

For, to omit all those thoughts and oper- 
ations which the author comprehends under 
the name of ideas, and which he thinks are 
connected with vibratiuncles ; to omit the 
perception of external objects, which he 
comprehends under the name of sensations ; 
to omit the sensations, properly so called, 
which accompany our passions [92] and 
affections, and to confine ourselves to the 
sensations which we have by means of our 
external senses, we can perceive no corre- 
spondence between the variety we find in 
their kinds and degrees, and that which may 
be supposed in vibrations. 

We have five senses, whose sensations 
differ totally in kind. By each of these, 
excepting perhaps that of hearing, we have 
a variety of sensations, which differ specific- 
ally, and not in degree only. How many 
tastes and smells are there which are spe- 
fically different, each of them capable of all 



degrees of strength and weakness ? Heat 
and cold, roughness and smoothness, hard- 
ness and softness, pain and pleasure, are 
sensations of touch that differ in kind, and 
each has an endless variety of degrees. 
Sounds have the qualities of acute and 
grave, loud and low, with all different de- 
grees of each. The varieties of colour are 
many more than we have names to express. 
How shall we find varieties in vibrations 
corresponding to all this variety of sensa- 
tions which we have by our five senses 
only? 

I know two qualities of vibrations in an 
uniform elastic medium, and I know no 
more. They may be quick or slow in vari- 
ous degrees, and they may be strong or 
weak in various degrees ; but I cannot find 
any division of our sensations that will make 
them tally with those divisions of vibra- 
tions. If we had no other sensations but 
those of hearing, the theory would answer 
well ; for sounds are either acute or grave, 
which may answer to quick or slow vibra- 
tions ; or they are loud or low, which an- 
swer to strong or weak vibrations. But 
then we have no variety of vibrations cor- 
responding to the immense variety of sens- 
ations which we have by sight, smell, taste, 
and touch. 

Dr Hartley has endeavoured to find out 
other two qualities of vibrations ; to wit, 
that they may primarily affect one part of 
the brain or another, and that they may 
vary in their direction according as they 
enter by different external nerves ; but these 
[93] seem to be added to make a number ; 
for, as far as we know, vibrations in an 
uniform elastic substance spread over the 
whole, and in all directions. However, 
that we may be liberal, we shall grant him 
four different kinds of vibrations, each of 
them having as many degrees as he pleases. 
Can he, or any man, reduce all our sensa- 
tions to four kinds ? We have five senses, 
and by each of them a variety of sensations, 
more than sufficient to exhaust all the 
varieties we are able to conceive in vibra- 
tions. 

Dr Hartley, indeed, was sensible of the 
difficulty of finding vibrations to suit all the 
variety of our sensations. His extensive 
knowledge of physiology and pathology 
could yield him but a feeble aid ; and, there- 
fore, he is often reduced to the necessity of 
heaping supposition upon supposition, con- 
jecture upon conjecture, to give some credi- 
bility to his hypothesis ; and, in seeking out 
vibrations which may correspond with the 
sensations of one sense, he seems to forget 
that those must be omitted which have been 
appropriated to another. 

Philosophers have accounted in some de- 
gree for our various sensations of sound by 
the vibrations of elastic air ; but it is to be 

[91-93 



CHAP. IV.] 



FALSE CONCLUSIONS, &c. 



253 



observed, first, That we know that such vi- 
brations do really exist ; and, secondly, That 
they tally exactly with the most remarkable 
phenomena of sound. We cannot, indeed, 
shew how any vibration should produce the 
sensation of sound. This must be resolved 
into the will of God, or into some cause 
altogether unknown. But we know that, 
as the vibration is strong or weak, the 
sound is loud or low ; we know that, as the 
vibration is quick or slow, the sound is 
acute or grave. We can point out that 
relation of synchronous vibrations which 
produces harmony or discord, and that 
relation of successive vibrations which pro- 
duces melody ; and all this is not conjec- 
tured, but proved by a sufficient induction. 
This account of sounds, therefore, is philo- 
sophical : although, perhaps, there may be 
many things relating to sound that we can- 
not account for, and of which the causes 
remain latent. The connections described 
[94] in this branch of philosophy are the 
work of God, and not the fancy of men. 

If anything similar to this could be shewn 
in accounting for all our sensations by 
vibrations in the medullary substance of the 
nerves and brain, it would deserve a place 
in sound philosophy ; but, when we are told 
of vibrations in a substance which no man 
could ever prove to have vibrations, or to 
be capable of them ; when such imaginary 
vibrations are brought to account for all our 
sensations, though we can perceive no cor- 
respondence in their variety of kind and 
degree to the variety of sensations — the con- 
nections described in such a system are the 
creatures of human imagination, not the 
work of God. 

The rays of light make an impression 
upon the optic nerves ; but they make none 
upon the auditory or olfactory. The vibra- 
tions of the air make an impression upon 
the auditory nerves ; but none upon the 
optic or the olfactory. The effluvia of 
bodies make an impression upon the olfac- 
tory nerves ; but make none upon the optic 
or auditory. No man has been able to give 
a shadow of reason for this. While this is 
the case, is it not better to confess our 
ignorance of the nature of those impressions 
made upon the nerves and brain in percep- 
tion, than to flatter our pride with the con- 
ceit of knowledge which we have not, and 
to adulterate philosophy with the spurious 
brood of hypotheses ?* 



* Reid appears to have been unacquainted with 
the works and theory of Bonnet. — With our author's 
strictures on the physiological hypotheses, the reader 
may compare those of Tetens, in his " Versuche." 
and of Srewa.tin his " Philosophical Essays."— H. 



[«»*, 95] 



CHAPTER IV. 

FALSE CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE 
IMPRESSIONS BEFORE MENTIONED. 

Some philosophers among the ancients, 
as well as among the moderns, imagined 
that man is nothing but a piece of matter, 
so curiously organized that the impressions 
of external objects produce in it sensation, 
perception, remembrance, and all the other 
operations [95] we are conscious of. * This 
foolish opinion could only take its rise from 
observing the constant connection which 
the Author of Nature hath established be- 
tween certain impressions made upon our 
senses and our perception of the objects by 
which the impression is made ; from which 
they weakly inferred that those impressions 
were the proper efficient causes of the cor- 
responding perception. 

But no reasoning is more fallacious than 
this — that, because two things are always 
conjoined, therefore one must be the cause 
of the other. Day and night have been 
joined in a constant succession since the 
beginning of the world; but who is so foolish 
as to conclude from this that day is the 
cause of night, or night the cause of the 
following day ? There is indeed nothing 
more ridiculous than to imagine that any 
motion or modification of matter should pro- 
duce thought. 

If one should tell of a telescope so exactly 
made as to have the power of seeing ; of a~ 
whispering gallery that had the power of 
hearing ; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to 
have the power of memory ; or of a machine 
so delicate as to feel pain when it was 
touched— such absurdities are so shocking to 
common sense that they would not find belief 
even among savages ; yet it is the same 
absurdity to think that the impressions of 
external objects upon the machine of our 
bodies can be the real efficient cause of 
thought and perception. 

Passing this, therefore, as a notion too 
absurd to admit of reasoning, another con- 
clusion very generally made by philoso- 
phers is, that, in perception, an impression 
is made upon the mind as well as upon the 
organ, nerves, and brain. Aristotle, as 
was before observed, thought that the form 
or image of the object perceived, enters by 



* The Stoics are reprehended for such a docl rine 
by Boethius: — 

*' Quondam porticus attulit 

Obscuros nimium sencs, 

Qui sensus et imagines 

E corporibus extimis 

Credant mentibus imprimi, 

Ut quondam celeri stylo 

Mos est squore pagina? 

Quae nullas habeat nota K , 

Pie-ssas flgere literas." Ac 
The tabula rasa remounts, however, to Aristotle 
—indeed to Plato— as an illustration. — H. 



254 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[ESSAY II. 



the organ of sense, and strikes upon the 
mind.* Mr Hume gives the name of im- 
pressions to all our perceptions, to all our 
sensations, and even to the objects which 
we perceive. Mr Locke affirms very posi- 
tively, that the ideas of external objects are 
produced [96] in our minds by impulse, 
" that being the only way we can conceive 
bodies to operate in." It ought, however, to 
be observed, in justice to Mr Locke, that he 
retracted this notion in his first letter to the 
Bishop of Worcester, and promised, in the 
next edition of his Essay, to have that pas- 
sage rectified ; but, either from forgetful- 
ness in the author, or negligence in the 
printer, the passage remains in all the sub- 
sequent editions 1 have seen. 

There is no prejudice more natural to 
man than to conceive of the mind as hav- 
ing some similitude to body in its opera- 
tions. Hence men have been prone to 
imagine that, as bodies are put in motion 
by some impulse or impression made upon 
them by contiguous bodies, so the mind is 
made to think and to perceive by some im- 
pression made upon it, or some impulse 
given to it by contiguous objects. If we 
have such a notion of the mind as Homer 
had of his gods — who might be bruised or 
wounded with swords and spears— we may 
then understand what is meant by impres- 
sions made upon it by a body ; but, if we 
conceive the mind to be immaterial — of 
which I think we have very strong proofs — 
we shall find it difficult to affix a meaning 
to impressions made upon it. 

There is a figurative meaning of impres- 
sions on the mind which is well authorized, 
and of which we took notice in the observa- 
tions made on that word ; but this meaning 
applies only to objects that are interesting. 
To say that an object which I see with per- 
fect indifference makes an impression upon 
my mind, is not, as I apprehend, good 
English. If philosophers mean no more 
but that I see the object, why should they 
invent an improper phrase to express what 
every man knows how to express in plain 
English ? 

But it is evident, from the manner in 
which this phrase is used by modern philo- 
sophers, that they mean, not barely to ex- 
press by it my perceiving an object, but to 
explain the manner of perception. They 
think that the object perceived acts upon 
the mind in some way similar to that in 
which one body acts upon another, by 
making [97] an impression upon it. The 
impression upon the mind is conceived to 
be something Avherein the mind is alto- 
gether passive, and has some effect pro- 

* A mere metaphor in Aristotle. (See Notes K. 
and M.) At any rate, the impr ssion was supposed 
to be made on the animated sensory, am not on the 
intellect— H. 



duced in it by the object. But this is a 
hypothesis which contradicts the common 
sense of mankind, and which ought not to 
be admitted without proof. 

When I look upon the wall of my room, 
the wall does not act at all, nor is capable 
of acting ; the perceiving it is an act or 
operation in me. That this is the common 
apprehension of mankind with regard to 
perception, is evident from the manner of 
expressing it in all languages. 

The vulgar give themselves no trouble 
how they perceive objects — they express 
what they are conscious of, and they express 
it with propriety ; but philosophers have an 
avidity to know how we perceive objects ; 
and, conceiving some similitude between a 
body that is put in motion, and a mind that 
is made to perceive, they are led to think 
that, as the body must receive some impulse 
to make it move, so the mind must receive 
some impulse or impression to make it per- 
ceive. This analogy seems to be confirmed, 
by observing that we perceive objects only 
when they make some impression upon the 
organs of sense, and upon the nerves and 
brain ; but it ought to be observed, that 
such is the nature of body that it cannot 
change its state, but by some force impressed 
upon it. This is not the nature of mind. 
All that we know about it shews it to be in 
its nature living and active, and to have 
the power of perception in its constitution, 
but still within those limits to which it is 
confined by the laws of Nature. 

It appears, therefore, that this phrase of 
the mind's having impressions made upon 
it by corporeal objects in perception, is 
either a phrase without any distinct mean- 
ing, and contrary to the propriety of the 
English language, or it is grounded upon 
an hypothesis which is destitute of proof. 
On that account, though we grant that in 
perception there is an impression made 
upon the organ of [98] sense, and upon the 
nerves and brain, we do not admit that 
the object makes any impression upon the 
mind. 

There is another conclusion drawn from 
the impressions made upon the brain in 
perception, which I conceive to have no 
solid foundation, though it has been adopted 
very generally by philosophers. It is, that, 
by the impressions made on the brain, 
images are formed of the object perceived ; 
and that the mind, being seated in the brain 
as its chamber of presence, immediately 
perceives those images only, and has no 
perception of the external object but by 
them. This notion of our perceiving ex- 
ternal objects, not immediately, but in cer- 
tain images or species of them conveyed by 
the senses, seems to be the most ancient 
philosophical hypothesis we have on the 
subject of perception, and to have with 

[96-98] 



CHAP. IV.] 



FALSE CONCLUSIONS, &c. 



255 



small variations retaiued its authority to 
this day. 

Aristotle, as was before observed, main- 
tained, that the species, images, or forms 
of external objects, coming from the object, 
are impressed on the mind. The followers 
of Democritus and Epicurus held the same 
thing, with regard to slender films of sub- 
tile matter coming from the object, that 
Aristotle did with regard to his immaterial 
species or forms. 

Aristotle thought every object of human 
understanding enters at first by the senses ;* 
and that the notions got by them are by 
the powers of the mind refined and spirit- 
ualized, so as at last to become objects of 
the most sublime and abstracted sciences. 
Plato, on the other hand, had a very mean 
opinion of all the knowledge we get by the 
senses. He thought it did not deserve the 
name of knowledge, and could not be the 
foundation of science ; because the objects 
of sense are individuals only, and are in a 
constant fluctuation. All science, according 
to him, must be employed about those 
eternal and immutable ideas which existed 
before the objects of sense, and are not liable 
to any change. In this there was an essen- 
tial difference between the systems of these 
two philosophers. [99] The notion of eter- 
nal and immutable ideas, which Plato bor- 
rowed from the Pythagorean school, was 
totally rejected by Aristotle, who held it as 
a maxim, that there is nothing in the intel- 
lect, which was not at first in the senses. 

But, notwithstanding this great difference 
in those two ancient systems, they might 
both agree as to the manner in which we 
perceive objects by our senses : and that 
they did so, I think, is probable ; because 
Aristotle, as far as I know, neither takes 
notice of any difference between himself 
and his master upon this point, nor lays 
claim to his theory of the manner of our 
perceiving objects as his own invention. 
It is still more probable, from the hints 
which Plato gives in the seventh book of his 
Republic, concerning the manner in which 
we perceive the objects of sense ; which he 
compares to persons in a deep and dark cave, 
who see not external objects themselves but 
only their shadows, by alight let into the 
cave through a small opening, -f 

It seems, therefore, probable that the Py- 
thagoreans and Platonists agreed with the 
Peripatetics in this general theory of per- 
ception — to wit, that the objects of sense 

* This is a very doubtful point, and has accord- 
ingly divided his followers. Texts can be quoted to 
prove, on tre one side, that Aristotle derived all our 
notions, a pos'e>iori, from the experience of sense; 
and, on the other, that he viewed sense only as afford- 
ing to intellect the condition requisite for it to be. 
come actually conscious of the native and necessary 
notions it, a priori, virtually possessed. — H. 

+ Reid wholly mistakes the meaning of Plato's 
simile of the cave. See below, under p. 1 16. — H. 
199, 100] 



are perceived only by certain images, or 
shadows of them, let into the mind, as into 
a camera obscura.* 

The notions of the ancients were very 
various with regard to the seat of the soul 
Since it has been discovered, by the im- 
provements in anatomy, that the nerves 
are the instruments of perception, and of 
the sensations accompanying it, and that 
the nerves ultimately terminate in the 
brain,-]- it has been the general opinion of 
philosophers that the brain is the seat of 
the soul ; and that she perceives the images 
that are brought there, and external things, 
only by means of them. 

Des Cartes, observing that the pineal 
gland is the only part of the brain that is 
single, all the other parts being double,^: 
and thinking that the soul must have one 
seat, was determined by this [100] to make 
that gland the soul's habitation, to which, 
by means of the animal spirits, intelligence 
is brought of all objects that affecD the 
senses. § 

Others have not thought proper to con- 
fine the habitation of the soul to the pineal 
gland, but to the brain in general, or to 
some part of it, which they call the sen- 
sor turn. Even the great Newton favoured 
this opinion, though he proposes it only as 
a query, with that modesty which dis- 
tinguished him no less than his great genius. 
" Is not," says he, "the sensorium of animals 
the place where the sentient substance is 
present, and to which the sensible species of 
things are brought through the nerves and 
brain, that there they may be perceived by 
the mind present in that place ? And is 
there not an incorporeal, living, intelligent, 
and omnipresent Being, who, in infinite 
space, as if it were in his sensorium, inti- 
mately perceives things themselves, and 
comprehends them perfectly, as being pre- 
sent to them ; of which things, that prin- 
ciple in us, which perceives and thinks, 
discerns only, in its little sensorium, the 
images brought to it through the organs of 
the senses ?"|| 

His great friend Dr Samuel Clarke 
adopted the same sentiment with more con- 
fidence. In his papers to Leibnitz, we 
find the following passages : " Without 
being present to the images of the things 
percehied, it (the soul) could not possibly 
perceive them. A living substanee can 
only there perceive where it is present, 
either to the things themselves, (as the 
omnipresent God is to the whole universe,) 

* An error. See below, under p. 1 16.— H. 

+ That is, since the time of Erasistratus and Galen. 
— H. 

X Which is not the case. The Hypophysis, the 
Vermiform process, &c, are not less single than the 
Conafium. — H. 

$ See above, p. 2:34, b, note *.— H. 

|| Before Reid, these crude conjectures of Newton 
were justly censured by Genovesi, and others — .H. 



256 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



or to the images of things, (as the soul of 
man is in its proper sensory.) Nothing 
can any more act, or be acted upon, where 
it is not present, than it can be where it is 
not. We are sure the soul cannot perceive 
what it is not present to, because nothing 
can act, or be acted upon, where it is not." 

Mr Locke expresses himself so upon 
this point, that, for the [101] most part, 
one would imagine that he thought that 
the ideas, or images of things, which he be- 
lieved to be the immediate objects of per- 
ception, are impressions upon the mind it- 
self; yet, in some passages, he rather 
places them in the brain, and makes them 
to be perceived by the mind there present. 
" There are some ideas," says he, " which 
have admittance only through one sense ; 
and, if the organs or the nerves, which are 
the conduits to convey them from without 
to their audience in the brain, the mind's 
presence room, if I may so call it, are so 
disordered as not to perform their function, 
they have no postern to be admitted by. 

" There seems to be a constant decay of 
all our ideas, even of those that are struck 
deepest. The pictures drawn in our minds 
are laid in fading colours. Whether the 
temper of the brain makes this difference, 
that in some it retains the characters drawn 
on it like marble, in others like freestone, 
and in others little better than sand, I shall 
not enquire."* 

From these passages of Mr Locke, and 
others of a like nature, it is plain that he 
thought that there are images of external 
objects conveyed to the brain. But whether 
he thought with Des Cartesi" and Newton, 
that the images in the brain are perceived 
by the mind there present, or that they are 
imprinted on the mind itself, is not so evi- 
dent. 

Now, with regard to this hypothesis, 
there are three things that deserve to be 
considered, because the hypothesis leans 
upon them ; and, if any one of them fail, it 
must fall to the ground. The first is, That 
the soul has its seat, or, as Mr Locke calls 
it, its presence room in the brain. The 
second, That there are images formed in 
the brain of all the objects of sense. The 
third, That the mind or soul perceives these 
images in the brain ; and that it perceives 
not external objects immediately, b*t only 
perceives them by means of those images. 
L102] 

As to the first point — that the soul has its 



• No great stress should be laid on such figurative 
passages as indications of the real opinion of Locke, 
which, on this point, it is not easy to discover. See 
Note O— -H. 

t Des Cartes is perhaps an erratum for Dr Clarke. 
If not, the opinion of Des Cartes is misrepresented j 
for he denied to the mind a!l consciousness or imme- 
diate knowledge of matter and its modifications. 
But of this again. See Note N H. 



seat hi the brain — this, surely, is not so well 
established as that we can safely build 
other principles upon it. There have been 
various opinions and much disputation about 
the place of spirits : whether they have a 
place ? and, if they have, how they occupy 
that place ? After men had fought in the 
dark about those points for ages, the wiser 
part seem to have left off disputing about 
them, as matters beyond the reach of the 
human faculties. 

As to the second point — that images of all 
the objects of sense are formed in the brain — 
we may venture to affirm that there is no 
proof nor probability of this, with regard to 
any of the objects of sense ; and that, with 
regard to the greater part of them, it is 
words without any meaning.* 

We have not the least evidence that the 
image of any external object is formed in 
the brain. The brain has been dissected 
times innumerable by the nicest ana- 
tomists ; every part of it examined by the 
naked eye, and with the help of microscopes ; 
but no vestige of an image of any external 
object was ever found. The brain seems 
to be the most improper substance that can 
be imagined for receiving or retaining images, 
being a soft, moist, medullary substance. 

But how are these images formed ? or 
whence do they come ? Says Mr Locke, the 
organs of sense and nerves convey them from 
without. This is just the Aristotelian 
hypothesis of sensible species, which modern 
philosophers have been at great pains to 
refute, and which must be acknowledged to 
be one of the most unintelligible parts of 
the Peripatetic system. Those who con- 
sider species of colour, figure, sound, and 
smell, coming from the object, and entering 
by the organs of sense, as a part of the 
scholastic jargon long ago discarded from 
sound philosophy, ought. to have discarded 
images in the brain along with them. 
There never was a shadow of argument 
brought by any author, to shew that an 
[103] image of any external object ever 
entered by any of the organs of sense. 

That external objects make some impres- 
sion on the organs of sense, and by them on 
the nerves and brain, is granted ; but that 
those impressions resemble the objects 
they are made by, so as that they may be 
called images of the objects, is most impro- 
bable. Every hypothesis that has been 
contrived, shews that there can be no such 
resemblance ; for neither the motions of 
animal spirits, nor the vibrations of elastic 
chords, or of elastic aether, or of the infinites- 



* It "would he rash to assume that, because a phi- 
losopher uses the term image, ox impression, ox idea, 
and places what it denotes in the brain, that he 
therefore means that the mind was cognizant of such 
corporeal affection, as of its object, either in percep- 
tion or imagination. See ><ote K. — H. 

[101-103] 



IV.] 



FALSE CONCLUSIONS, &c. 



257 



imal particles of the nerves, can be sup- 
posed to resemble the objects by which 
they are excited. 

We know that, in vision, an image of the 
visible object is formed in the bottom of the 
eye by the rays of light. But we know, 
also, that this image cannot be conveyed to 
the brain, because the optic nerve, and all 
the parts that surround it, are opaque and 
impervious to the rays of light ; and there 
is no other organ of sense in which any 
image of the object is formed. 

It is farther to be observed, that, with 
regard to some objects of sense, we may 
understand what is meant by an image of 
them imprinted on the brain ; but, with 
regard to most objects of sense, the phrase 
is absolutely unintelligible, and conveys no 
meaning at all. As to objects of sight, I 
understand what is meant by an image of 
their figure in the brain. But how shall we 
conceive an image of their colour where there 
is absolute darkness ? And as to all other 
objects of sense, except figure and colour, 
I am unable to conceive what is meant by an 
image of them. Let any man say what he 
means by an image of heat and cold, an image 
of hardness or softness, an image of sound, 
or smell, or taste. The word image, when 
applied to these objects of sense, has abso- 
lutely no meaning. Upon what a weak 
foundation, then, does this hypothesis stand, 
when it supposes that images of all the 
objects of sense are imprinted on the brain, 
being conveyed thither by the conduits of the 
organs and nerves !* [104] 

The third point in this hypothesis is, 
That the mind perceives the images in the 
brain, and external objects only by means 
of them. This is as improbable as that 
there are such images to be perceived. If 
our powers of perception be not altogether 
fallacious, the objects we perceive are not 
in our brain, but without us.-|- We are so 
far from perceiving images in the brain, 
that we do not perceive our brain at all ; 
nor would any man ever have known that 
he had a brain, if anatomy had not dis- 
covered, by dissection, that the brain is a 
constituent part of the human body. 

To sum up what has been said with re- 
gard to the organs of perception, and the 
impressions made upon our nerves and 
brain. It is a law of our nature, estab- 
lished by the will of the Supreme Being, 
that we perceive no external object but by 



* These objections to the hypothesis in question, 
have been frequently urged both in ancient and in 
modern times. See Note K. — H. 

t If this de taken literally and by itself, then, ac- 
cording to Reid, perception is not an immanent "og- 
nition; extension and figure are, in that, act, not 
merely suggest- -d conceptions; and, as we are perci- 
pient «f the non-ego, and, conscious of the perception, 
we are therefore conscious of the non-ego. But see 
Note C— H. 
[104 ; 105] 



means of the organs given us for that pur- 
pose. But these organs do not perceive. 
The eye is the organ of sight, but it sees 
not. A telescope is an artificial organ of 
sight. The eye is a natural organ of sight, 
but it sees as little as the telescope. We 
know how the eye forms a picture of the 
visible object upon the retina ; but how this 
picture makes us see the object we know 
not ; and if experience had not informed us 
that such a picture is necessary to vision, 
we should never have known it. We can 
give no reason why the picture on the re- 
tina should be followed by vision, while a 
like picture on any other part of the body 
produces nothing like vision. 

It is likewise a law of our nature, that we 
perceive not external objects, unless certain 
impressions be made by the object upon the 
organ, and by means of the organ upon the 
nerves and brain. But of the nature of 
those impressions we are perfectly ignorant ; 
and though they are conjoined with percep- 
tion by the will of our Maker, yet it does 
not appear that they have any necessary con- 
nection with it in their own nature, far less 
that they can be the proper efficient cause 
of it. [105] We perceive, because God has 
given us the power of perceiving, and not 
because we have impressions from objects. 
We perceive nothing without those impres- 
sions, because our Maker has limited and 
circumscribed our powers of perception, by 
such laws of Nature as to his wisdom seemed 
meet, and such as suited our rank in his 
creation. * 



* The doctrine of Reid and Stewart, in regard to 
our perception of external things, bears a close ana- 
logy to the Cartesian scheme of divine assistance, or 
of occasional causes. It seems, however, to coincide 
most completely with the opinion of Ruardus Andala, 
a Dutch Cartesian, who attempted to reconcile the 
theory of assistance with that of physical influence. 
"Statuo,"hesays. "nosclarissimametdistinctissimam 
hujus opeialionis et unionis posse habere idecm, si 
modo, quod omnino facere oportet, ad Deum, cans, 
sam ejus primam et liberam ascendamus, et ab ejus 
beneplacito admirandum hunc effectum derivemus, 
Nos possumus huic vel illi motui e. gr. carapanas, 
sic et hedera? suspense. Uteris scriptis, verbis quibus- 
cunque pronunciatis, aliisque signis, varias ideas 
alligare, ita, ut per visum, vel auditum in menteex. 
citentur varias ideas, perceptiones et sensationes .• 
tnnon hincclare et facile intellioimus, Deum crea- 
torem m ntis et corporis potuisse inistituere et orr.i- 
are, ut per vaios in corpore motus varias in mente 
excitei. tur ideae et perceptiones ; et vicissim, ut per 
varias mentis volitiones, varii in corpore excitentur 
ct producantur nu tus ? Huic et pro varia alter, 
utrius partis dispositione altera pars variis moriis 
affici potest. Hoc autem a Deo ita ordinatum et 
erfectum esse, a posteriori, ccntinua, certissima et 
clarissima experientia docet Testes irrefragabiles 
omnique exceptione majores reciproci hujus com- 
mercii, operationis meniis in corpus, et corporis in 
mentem, nee non communionis status, sunt senstis 
omnes turn extemi, turn interni ; ut et omnes et 
singula? et continue actiones mentis in corp- s, de 
quibus modo fuit actum. Si quis vero a proprieta- 
tibus mentis ad proprietates corporis progredi velif, 
aut exrarttaxzdiversissiBaarum harum substar.tiarum 
dedu< ere motum in corpore, & perceptiones in n ente, 
aut hos effectus ut necessano connexos spectare ; 
na: is frustra erit, nihil intelhget, perveisissimephi. 



258 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



|_ESSAY II. 



CHAPTER V. 



OF PERCEPTION. 



In speaking of the impressions made on 
our organs in perception, we build upon 
facts borrowed from anatomy and physio- 
logy, for which we have the testimony of 
our senses. But, being now to speak of 
perception itself, which is solely an act of 
the mind, we must appeal to another 
authority. The operations of our minds 
are known, not by sense, but by conscious- 
ness, the authority of which is as certain 
and as irresistible as that of sense. 

In order, however, to our having a distinct 
notion of any of the operations of our own 
minds, it is not enough that we be conscious 
of them ; for all men have this consciousness. 
It is farther necessary that we attend to them 
while they are exerted, and reflect upon them 
with care, while they are recent and fresh 
in our memory. It is necessary that, by 
employing ourselves frequently in this way, 
we get the habit of this attention and reflec- 
tion ; and, therefore, for the proof of facts 
which I shall have occasion to mention upon 
this subject, I can only appeal to the reader's 
own thoughts, whether such facts are not 
agreeable to what he is conscious of in his 
own mind. [106] 

If, therefore, we attend to that act of 
our mind which we call the perception of an 
external object of sense, we shall find in it 
these three things: — First, Some con- 
ception or notion of the object perceived ; 
Secondly, A strong and irresistible convic- 
tion and belief of its present existence ; and, 
Thirdly, That this conviction and belief are 
immediate, and not the effect of reasoning. * 

First, It is impossible to perceive an 
object without having some notion or con- 
ception of that which we perceive. We 
may, indeed, conceive an object which we 
do not perceive ; but, when we perceive the 
object, we must have some conception of it 
at the same time ; and we have commonly 
a more clear and steady notion of the object 
while we perceive it, than we have from 
memory or imagination when it is not per- 
ceived. Yet, even in perception, the notion 
which our senses give of the object may be 
more or less clear, more or less distinct, in 
all possible degrees. 

Thus we see more distinctly an object at 
a small than at a great distance. An object 
at a great distance is seen more distinctly in 



losophabitur nullamque hujus rei ideam habere po- 
tent. Si vero ad Deum i reatorem adscendamus, 
eumque vere agnoscamus, nihil hie erit obscuri, 
hwnc effectum clari^sirae intelligemus, et quidem per 
caussam ejus primam ; qua? perfectissima demum 
est scientia " — H. 

* See above, p. 183, a, note « : p. 128, b, note * ; 
and Note C— H. 



a clear than in a foggy day. An object 
seen indistinctly with the naked eye, on 
account of its smallness, may be seen dis- 
tinctly with a microscope. The objects in 
this room will be seen by a person in the 
room less and less distinctly as the light of 
the day fails; they pass through all the 
various degrees of distinctness according to 
the degrees of the light, and, at last, in 
total darkness they are not seen at all. 
What has been said of the objects of sight 
is so easily applied to the objects of the 
other senses, that the application may be 
left to the reader. 

In a matter so obvious to every person 
capable of reflection, it is necessary &nly 
farther to observe, that the notion which 
we get of an object, merely by our external 
sense, ought not to be confounded with that 
more scientific notion which a man, come to 
the years of understanding, may have of the 
same object, by attending to its various 
attributes, or to its various parts, and their 
relation to each other, and to the whole. 
[107] Thus, the notion which a child has of 
a jack for roasting meat, will be acknowledged 
to be very different from that of a man who 
understands its construction, and perceives 
the relation of the parts to one another, and 
to the whole. The child sees the jack and 
every part of it as well as the man. The 
child, therefore, has all the notion of it 
which sight gives ; whatever there is more 
in the notion which the man forms of it, 
must be derived from other powers of the 
mind, which may afterwards be explained. 
This observation is made here only that we 
may not confound the operations of differ- 
ent powers of the mind, which by being 
always conjoined after we grow up to under- 
standing, are apt to pass for one and the same. 

Secondly, In perception we not only have 
a notion more or less distinct of the object 
perceived, but also an irresistible conviction 
and belief of its existence. This is always 
the case when we are certain that we per- 
ceive it. There may be a perception so 
faint and indistinct as to leave us in doubt 
whether we perceive the object or not. 
Thus, when a star begins to twinkle as the 
light of the sun withdraws, one may, for a 
short time, think he sees it without being 
certain, until the perception acquire some 
strength and steadiness. When a ship just 
begins to appear in the utmost verge of the 
horizon, we may at first be dubious whether 
we perceive it or not ; but when the percep- 
tion is in any degree clear and steady, there 
remains no doubt of its reality ; and when 
the reality of the perception is ascertained, 
the existence of the object perceived can no 
longer be doubted.* 



• In this paragraph there is a confusion of that 
which is pe ccived and that which is inferred from 
the perception. — H. 

fl06, 1071 



en AT v.] 



OF PERCEPTION. 



259 



By the laws of all nations, in the most 
solemn judicial trials, wherein men's for- 
tunes and lives are at stake, the sentence 
passes according to the testimony of eye or 
ear witnesses of good credit. An upright 
judge will give a fair hearing to every objec- 
tion that can be made to the integrity of a 
witness, and allow it to be possible that he 
may be corrupted ; but no judge will ever 
suppose that witnesses maybe imposed upon 
by trusting to their eyes and ears. And if 
a sceptical counsel should plead against the 
testimony of the witnesses, that they had 
no other evidence for what they [108] de- 
clared but the testimony of their eyes and 
ears, and that we ought not to put so much 
faith in our senses as to deprive men of life 
or fortune upon their testimony, surely no 
upright judge would admit a plea of this 
kind. I believe no counsel, however scep- 
tical, ever dared to offer such an argument ; 
and, if it was offered, it would be rejected 
with disdain. 

Can any stronger proof be given that it 
is the universal judgment of mankind that 
the evidence of sense is a kind of evidence 
which we may securely rest upon in the 
most momentous concerns of mankind ; 
that it is a kind of evidence against which 
we ought not to admit any reasoning ; and, 
therefore, that to reason either for or against 
it is an insult to common sense ? 

The whole conduct of mankind in the 
daily occurrences of life, as well as the so- 
lemn procedure of judicatories in the trial 
of causes civil and criminal, demonstrates 
this. I know only of two exceptions that 
may be offered against this being the uni- 
versal belief of mankind. 

The first exception is that of some luna- 
tics who have been persuaded of things that 
seem to contradict the clear testimony of 
their senses- It is said there have been 
lunatics and hypochondriacal persons, who 
seriously believed themselves to be made of 
glass ; and, in consequence of this, lived in 
continual terror of having their brittle frame 
shivered into pieces. 

All I have to say to this is, that our 
minds, in our present state, are, as well as 
our bodies, liable to strange disorders ; and, 
as we do not judge of the natural constitu- 
tion of the body from the disorders or dis- 
eases to which it is subject from accidents, 
so neither ought we to judge of the natural 
powers of the mind from its disorders, but 
from its sound state. It is natural to man, 
and common to the species, to have two 
hands and two feet ; yet I have seen a man, 
and a very ingenious one, who was born 
without either hands or feet. [109 J It is 
natural to man to have faculties superior to 
those of brutes ; yet we see some indivi- 
duals whose faculties are not equal to those 
of many brutes ; and the wisest man may, 
[108-110] 



by various accidents, be reduced to this 
state. General rules that regard those 
whose intellects are sound are not over- 
thrown by instances of men whose intellects 
are hurt by any constitutional or accidental 
disorder. 

The other exception that may be made 
to the principle we have laid down is that 
of some philosophers who have maintained 
that the testimony of sense is fallacious, 
and therefore ought never to be trusted. 
Perhaps it might be a sufficient answer to 
this to say, that there is nothing so absurd 
which some philosophers have not main- 
tained.* It is one thing to profess a doc- 
trine of this kind, another seriously to be- 
lieve it, and to be governed by it in the 
conduct of fife. It is evident that a man 
who did not believe his senses could not 
keep out of harm's way an hour of his life ; 
yet, in all the history of philosophy, we 
never read of any sceptic that ever stepped 
into fire or water because he did not believe 
his senses, or that shewed in the conduct of 
life less trust in his senses than other men 
have.-)- This gives us just ground to appre- 
hend that philosophy was never able to 
conquer that natural belief which men have 
in their senses ; and that all their subtile 
reasonings against this belief were never 
able to persuade themselves. 

It appears, therefore, that the clear and 
distinct testimony of our senses carries 
irresistible conviction along with it to every 
man in his right judgment. 

I observed, Tlnrdly, That this conviction 
is not only irresistible, but it is immediate ; 
that is, it is not by a train of reasoning 
and argumentation that we come to be 
convinced of the existence of what we 
perceive ; we ask no argument for the 
existence of the object, but that we per- 
ceive it ; perception commands our belief 
upon its own authority, and disdains to 
rest its authority upon any reasoning what- 
soever. % [no] 

The conviction of a truth may be irre- 
sistible, and yet not immediate. Thus, my 
conviction that the three angles of every 
plain triangle are equal to two right angles, 
is irresistible, but it is not immediate ; I 
am convinced of it by demonstrative rea- 
soning. There are other truths in mathe- 
matics of which we have not only an irre- 
sistible but an immediate conviction. Such 
are the axioms. Our belief of the axioms 
m mathematics is not grounded upon argu- 



* A saying of Varro. — H. 

t All this we read, however, in Laertius, of Pyrrho ; 
and on the authority of Antigonus Carystius, the 
great sceptic's contemporary. Whether we are to 
believe the narrative is another question.— H. 

X If Keid holds that in perception we have only a 
conception of the Non-Eno in the Ego, this belief is 
either not the reflex of a cognition, but- a blind faith, 
or it is mediate, as held by Stewart. — Phi os. Ess. ii 
c 2.-H. 

82 



260 



OX THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay n. 



raent — arguments are grounded upon them ; 
but their evidence is discerned immediately 
by the human understanding. 

It is, no doubt, one thing to have an 
immediate conviction of a self-evident 
axiom ; it is another thing to have an im- 
mediate conviction of the existence of what 
we see ; but the conviction is equally imme- 
diate and equally irresistible in both cases. 
No man thinks of seeking a reason to believe 
what he sees ; and, before we are capable of 
reasoning, we put no less confidence in our 
senses than after. The rudest savage is as 
fully convinced of what he sees, and hears, 
and feels, as the most expert logician. The 
constitution of our understanding deter- 
mines us to hold the truth of a mathematical 
axiom as a first principle, from which other 
truths may be deduced, but it is deduced 
from none ; and the constitution of our 
power of perception determines us to hold 
the existence of what we distinctly perceive 
as a fir st. principle, from which other truths 
may be deduced ; but it is deduced from 
none. What has been said of the irresis- 
tible and immediate belief of the existence 
of objects distinctly perceived, I mean only 
to affirm with regard to persons so far ad- 
vanced in understanding as to distinguish 
objects of mere imagination from things 
which have a real existence. Every man 
knows that he may have a notion of Don 
Quixote, or of Garagantua, Avithout any 
belief that such persons ever existed ; and 
that of Julius Caesar and Oliver Crom- 
well, he has not only a notion, but a belief 
that they did really exist. [Ill] But 
whether children, from the time that they 
begin to use their senses, make a distinction 
between things which are only conceived or 
imagined, and things which really exist, 
may be doubted. Until we are able to 
make this distinction, we cannot properly 
be said to believe or to disbelieve the 
existence of anything. The belief of the 
existence of anything seems to suppose a 
notion of existence — a notion too abstract, 
perhaps, to enter into the mind of an in- 
fant. I speak of the power of perception 
in those that are adult and of a sound 
mind, who believe that there are some 
things which do really exist ; and that there 
are many things conceived by themselves, 
and by others, which have no existence. 
That such persons do invariably ascribe 
existence to everything which they distinctly 
perceive, without seeking reasons or argu- 
ments for doing so, is perfectly evident from 
the whole tenor of human life. 

The account I have given of our percep- 
tion of external objects, is intended as a 
faithful delineation of what every man, come 
to years of understanding, and capable of 
giving attention to what passes in his own 
mind, may feel in himself. In what man- 



ner the notion of external objects, and the 
immediate belief of their existence, is pro- 
duced by means of our senses, I am not 
able to shew, and I do not pretend to shew. 
If the power of perceiving external objects 
in certain circumstances, be a part of the 
original constitution of the human mind, 
all attempts to account for it will be vain. 
No other account can be given of the con- 
stitution of things, but the will of Him that 
made them. As we can give no reason why 
matter is extended and inert, why the mind 
thinks and is conscious of its thoughts, but 
the will of Him who made both ; so I sus- 
pect we can give no other reason why, hi 
certain circumstances, we perceive external 
objects, and in others do not.* 

The Supreme Being intended that we 
should have such knowledge of the material 
objects that surround us, as is necessary in 
order to our supplying the wants of nature, 
and avoiding the dangers to which we are 
constantly exposed ; and he has admirably 
fitted our powers of perception to this 
purpose. [ 1 12] If the intelligence we have 
of external objects were to be got by 
reasoning only, the greatest part of men 
would be destitute of it ; for the greatest 
part of men hardly ever learn to reason ; 
and in infancy and childhood no man can 
Reason : Therefore, as this intelligence of 
the objects that surround us, and from 
which we may receive so much benefit or 
harm, is equally necessary to children and 
to men, to the ignorant and to the learned, 
God in his wisdom conveys it to us in a 
way that puts all upon a level. The inform- 
ation of the senses is as perfect, and gives 
as full conviction to the most ignorant as to 
the most learned. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT IT IS TO ACCOUNT FOR A PHENOMENON 
IN NATURE. 

An object placed at a proper distance, 
and in a good light, while the eyes are shut, 
is not perceived at all ; but no sooner do 
we open our eyes upon it than we have, as 
it were by inspiration, a certain knowledge 
of its existence, of its colour, figure, and 
distance. This is a fact which every one 
knows. The vulgar are satisfied with know-. 
ing the fact, and give themselves no trouble 
about the cause of it : but a philosopher is 
impatient to know how this event is pro- 
duced, to account for it, or assign its cause. 

This avidity to know the causes of things 
is the parent of all philosophy, true and 
false. Men of speculation place a great 
part of their happiness in such knowledge. 

* See above, p. 128, b, note *, and p. 130, b, note * : 
a> Vote A.-H. 



[Ill, 112] 



CliAP. VI. "J 



ACCOUNT OF A PHENOMENON. 



261 



Felix qui poiuit rerttm cognoscere causas, 
has always been a sentiment of human 
nature. But, as in the pursuit of other 
kinds of happiness men often mistake the 
road, so in none have they more frequently 
done it than in the philosophical pursuit of 
the causes of things. [113] 

It is a dictate of common sense, that the 
causes we assign of appearances ought to 
be real, and not fictions of human imagina- 
tion. It is likewise self-evident, that such 
causes ought to be adequate to the effects 
that are conceived to be produced by them. 

That those who are less accustomed to 
inquiries into the causes of natural appear- 
ances, may the better understand what it 
is to shew the cause of such appearances, 
or to account for them, I shall borrow a 
plain instance of a phsenomenon or appear- 
ance, of which a full and satisfactory ac- 
count has been given. The phsenomenon 
is this : That a stone, or any heavy body, 
falling from a height, continually increases 
its velocity as it descends ; so that, if it 
acquire a certain velocity in one second of 
time, it will have twice that A r elocity at the 
end of two seconds, thrice at the end of 
three seconds, and so on in proportion to 
the time. This accelerated velocity in a 
stone falling must have been observed from 
the beginning of the world ; but the first 
person, as far as we know, who accounted 
for it in a proper and philosophical manner, 
was the famous Galileo, after innumer- 
able false and fictitious accounts had been 
given of it. 

He observed, that bodies once put in 
motion continue that motion with the same 
velocity, and in the same direction, until 
they be stopped or retarded, or have the 
direction of their motion altered, by some 
force impressed upon them. This property 
of bodies is called their inertia, or inac- 
tivity; for it implies no more than that 
bodies cannot of themselves change their 
state from rest to motion, or from motion 
to rest. He observed also, that gravity acts 
constantly and equally upon a body, and 
therefore will give equal degrees of velocity 
to a body in equal times. From these 
principles, which are known from experi- 
ence to be fixed laws of nature, Galileo 
shewed that heavy bodies must descend 
with a velocity uniformly accelerated, as 
by experience they are found to do. [114] 
For if the body by its gravitation ac- 
quire a certain velocity at the end of one 
second, it would, though its gravitation 
should cease that moment, continue to go on 
with that velocity ; but its gravitation con- 
tinues, and will in another second give it an 
additional velocity, equal to that which it gave 
in the first ; so that the whole velocity at 
the end of two seconds, will be twice as great 
as at the end of one. In like manner, this 
fl 13-1 15"1 



velocity being continued through the third 
second, and having the same addition by 
gravitation as in any of the preceding, the 
whole velocity at the end of the third second 
will be thrice as great as at the end of the 
first, and so on continually. 

We may here observe, that the causes 
assigned of this phsenomenon are two : First, 
That bodies once put in motion retain their 
velocity and their direction, until it is changed 
by some force impressed upon them. Se- 
condly, That the weight or gravitation of a 
body is always the same. These are laws 
of Nature, confirmed by universal experi- 
ence, and therefore are not feigned but true 
causes. Then, they are precisely adequate 
to the effect ascribed to them ; they must 
necessarily produce that very motion in 
descending bodies which we find to take 
place ; and neither more nor less. The 
account, therefore, given of this phsenom- 
non, is just and philosophical ; no other 
will ever be required or admitted by those 
who understand this. 

It ought likewise to be observed, that 
the causes assigned of this phsenomenon, 
are things of which we can assign no cause. 
Why bodies once put in motion continue to 
move — why bodies constantly gravitate to- 
wards the earth with the same force — no 
man has been able to shew : these are facts 
confirmed by universal experience, and 
they must no doubt have a cause ; but their 
cause is unknown, and we call them laws 
of Nature, because we know no cause of 
them, but the will of the Supreme Being. 

But may we not attempt to find the cause 
of gravitation, and of other phsenomena, 
which we call laws of Nature ? No doubt 
we may. [115] We know notthe limit which 
has been set to human knowledge, and our 
knowledge of the works of God can never 
be carried too far. But, supposing gravita- 
tion to be accounted for, by an sethereal 
elastic medium, for instance, this can only be 
done, first, by proving the existence and the 
elasticity of this medium ; and, secondly, 
by shewing that this medium must neces- 
sarily produce that gravitation which bodies 
are known to have. Until this be done, 
gravitation is not accounted for, nor is 
its cause known ; and when this is done, 
the elasticity of this medium will be consi- 
dered as a law of nature whose cause is 
unknown. The chain of natural causes has, 
not unfitly, been compared to a chain hang- 
ing down from heaven : a link that is dis- 
covered supports the links below it, but it 
must itself be supported ; and that which 
supports it must be supported, until we 
come to the first link, which is supported 
by the throne of the Almighty. Every na- 
tural cause must have a cause, until we 
ascend to the first cause, which is uncaused, 
and operates not by necessity but by wilt 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



By what has been said in this chapter, 
those who are but little acquainted with 
philosophical inquiries, may see what is 
meant by accounting for a phaenomenon, 
or shewing its cause, which ought to be well 
understood, in order to judge of the theories 
by which philosophers have attempted to 
account for our perception of external ob- 
jects by the senses. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SENTIMENTS* OP PHILOSOPHERS ABOUT THE 
PERCEPTION OP EXTERNAL OBJECTS ; AND, 
FIRST, OF THE THEORY OF FATHER MALE- 
BRANCHE.-j* 

How the correspondence is carried on 
between the thinking principle within us, and 
the material world without us, has always 
been found a very difficult problem to those 
philosophers who think themselves obliged 
to account for every phsenomenon in nature. 
[116] Many philosophers, ancient and 
modern, have employed their invention to 
discover how we are made to perceive ex- 
ternal objects by our senses ; and there 
appears to be a very great uniformity in 
their sentiments in the main, notwithstand- 
ing their variations in particular points. 

Plato illustrates our manner of perceiving 
the objects of sense, in this manner. He 
supposes a dark subterraneous cave, in 
which men He bound in such a manner 
that they can direct their eyes only to one 
part of the cave : far behind, there is a 
light, some rays of which come over a wall 
to that part of the cave which is before the 
eyes of our prisoners. A number of per- 
sons, variously employed, pass between 
them and the light, whose shadows are seen 
by the prisoners, but not the persons them- 
selves. 

In this manner, that philosopher con- 
ceived that, by our senses, we perceive the 
shadows of things only, and not things 
themselves. He seems to have borrowed 
his notions on this subject, from the Pytha- 
goreans, and they very probably from Py- 
thagoras himself. If we make allowance 
for Plato's allegorical genius, his sentiments 
on this subject, correspond very well with 

* Sentiment, as here and elsewhere employed by 
Reid, in the meaning of opinion, {sententia,) is not 
to be imitated. There are, undoubtedly, precedents 
to be found for sucli usage in English writers ; and, in 
the French and Italian languages, this is one of the 
ordinary signfications of the word. — H. 

t It is not easy to conceive by what principle the 
order of the history of opinions touching Perception, 
contained in the nine following chapters, is deter, 
mined. It is not chronological, and it is not systematic. 
Of these theories, there is a very able survey, by M. 
Rover Collard, among the fragments of his lectures, 
in the third volume of Jouffroy's " Oeuvres rie Reid." 
That distinguished philosopher has, however, placed 
too great a reliance upon the accuracy of Reid.— H. 



those of his scholar, Aristotle, and of the 
Peripatetics. The shadows of Plato may 
very well represent the species and phan- 
tasms of the Peripatetic school, and the 
ideas and impressions of modern philo- 
sophers.* 

* This interpretation of the meaning of Plato's 
comparison of the cave exhibits a curious mistake, 
in which Keid is followed by Mr Stewart and many 
others, and which, it is remarkable, has never yet 
been detected. In the similitude >n question, (which 
will be found in the seventh book of the Republic,) 
Plato is supposed to intend an illustration of the 
mode in which the shadows or vicarious images of 
external things are admitted into the mind — to 
typify, in short, an hypothesis of sensitive perceptien. 
On this supposition, the identity of the Platonic, 
Pythagorean, and Peripatetic theories of this pro- 
cess is inferred. Nothing can, however, be more 
groundless than the supposition ; nothing more erro. 
neous than the inference. By his cave, images, and 
shadows, Plato meant simply to illustrate the grand 
principle of his philosophy — that the Sensible or Ec- 
typal world, (phaenomenal, transitory, -yiyvi/xivov, ov 
xoci fiw eV,) stands to the Noetic or Archetypal, (sub- 
stantial, permanent, S»ro>s ov,) in the same relation 
of comparative unreality, in which the shadows of the 
images of sensible existences themselves, stand to the 
things of which they are the dim and distant adum- 
brations. In the language of an illustrious poet — 
" An nescis, quaecunque heic sunt, qua? hac nocte 

teguntur, 
Omnia res prorsus veras non esse, sed umbras, 
Aut specula, unde ad nos aliena elucet imago ? 
Terra quidem, et maria alta, atque his circumfluus 

aer, 
Etquas consistunt ex iis, haec omnia tenueis 
Sunt umbrae, humanos qua? tanquam somnia qua- 

dam 
Pertingunt animos, fallaci et imagine ludunt, 
Nunquam eadem, fluxu semper variata perenni. 
Sol autem, Lunzeque globus, fulgentiaque astra 
Caetera, sint quamvis meliori praedita vita, 
Et donata sevo immortali, heec ipsa tamen sunt 
iEterni specula, in quae animus, qui est inde profec- 

tus, 
Inspiciens, patria? quodam quasi tactus amore, 
Ardescit. Verum quoniam heic non perstat et ultra 
Nescio quid sequitur secum, tacitusque requirit, 
Nosse licet circum hsec ipsum consistere verum, 
Non finem : sed enim esse aliud quid, cujus imago 
Splendet in iis, quod per se ipsum est, et principium 

esse 
Omnibus Eeternum, ante omnem numerumque diem- 

que; 
In quo alium Solem atque aliara splendescere Lu- 

nam 
Adspicias, aliosque orbes, alia astra manere, 
Terramque, fiuviosque alios, atque aera, et ignem, 
Et nemora, atque aliis evrare animalia silvis.'* 

And as the comparison is misunderstood, so no- 
thing can be conceived more adverse to the doctrine 
of Plato than the theory it is supposed to elucidate. 
Plotinus, indeed, formally refutes, as contrary to the 
Platonic, the very hypothesis thus attributed to his 
master. (Enn. IV, 1. vi., cc. 1, 3.) The doctrineof 
the Platonists on this point has been almost wholly 
neglected; and the author among them whose work 
contains its most articulate developement has been 
so completely overlooked, both by scholars and phi- 
losophers, that hi; work is of the rarest, while even 
his name is mentioned in no history of philosophy. 
It is here sufficient to state, that the e'i2a?.a., the 
kiyoi -yvus-txo), the forms representative of external 
things, and corresponding to the species sensiles ex. 
pressce of the schoolmen, were not held by the Plato- 
nists to be derived from without. Prior to the act of 
perception, they have a latent but real existence in 
the soul; and, by the impassive energy of the mind 
itself, are elicited into consciousness, on occasion of the 
impression (xivri(ris,nti,8o;,".tA$a.irts) made on the exter- 
nal organ, and of the vital, form (tartxov tTSs?), in con- 
sequence thereof, sublimated in the animal life. The 
verses of Boethius, which have been so frequently 
mi understood, contain an accurate statement of the 
Platonic theory of perception. After refuting the 

M161 



:i.] 



SENTIMENTS ABOUT PERCEPTION. 



263 



Two thousand years after Plato, Mr 
Locke, who studied the operations of the 
human mind so much, and with so great 
success, represents our manner of perceiving 
external objects, by a similitude very much 
resembling that of the cave. " Methinks," 
says he, "the understanding is not much 
unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with 
only some little opening left, to let in exter- 
nal visible resemblances or ideas of things 
without. Would the pictures coming into 
such a dark room but stay there, and lie so 
orderly as to be found upon occasion, it 
would very much resemble the under- 
standing of a man, in reference to all objects 
of sight, and the ideas of them. " [117] 

Plato's subterranean cave, and Mr Locke's 
dark closet, may be applied with ease to all 
the systems of perception that have been 
invented : for they all suppose that we 
perceive not external objects immediately, 
and that the immediate objects of percep- 
tion are only certain shadows of the ex- 
ternal objects. Those shadows or images, 
which we immediately perceive, were by 
the ancients called species, forms, phan- 
tasms. Since the time of Des Cartes, they 
have commonly been called ideas, and by 
Mr Hume, impressions. But all philoso- 
phers, from Plato to Mr Hume, agree in 
this, That we do not perceive external ob- 
jects immediately, and that the immediate 
object of perception must be some image 
present to the mind.* So far there ap- 



Stoical doctrine of the passivity of mind in this pro- 
cess, he proceeds : — 

" Mens est efficiens magis 

Longe causa potentior, 

Quam qua? materia? modo 

lmpressas patitur notas. 

Prcecedit tamen excitans 

Ac vires animi movens 

Vivo in corpore passio, 

Cum vel lux oculos ferit, 

Vel vox auribus instrepit: 

Turn mentis vigor exoitus 

Quas intus species tenet, 

Ad motus similes vocans, 

Notis applicat exteris, 

Introrsumque reconditis 

fi'ormis miscet imagines." 
I cannot now do more than indicate the contrast 
of this doctrine to the Peripatetic (I do not say Aris- 
totelian) theory, and its approximation to the Carte, 
iian and Leibnitzian hypoiheses; which, however, 
both attempt to explain, what the Platonic did not— 
how the mind, ex hypothesi, above all physical in. 
licence, is determined, on the presence of the un- 
known reality within the sphere of sense, to call into 
consciousness the representation through which that 
reality is made known to us. I may add, that not 
merely the Platonists, but some of the older Peripa- 
tetics held that the soul virtually contained within it- 
self representative forms, which were only excited 
by the external reality; as Theophrastus and The- 
mi.itius, to say nothing of the Hatonizing Porphyry, 
Simplicius and Ammonius Hermia? ; and the same 
opinion, adopted probably from the latter, by his 
pupil, the Arabian Adelandus, subsequently he. 
came even the common doctrine of the Mooiish 
Aristotelians. 

I shall afterwards have occasion to notice that 
Bacon has also wrested Plato's similitude of the cave 
from its genuine signification — H. 

* This is not correct. There were philosophers 
[117, 118] 



pears an unanimity, rarely to be found among 
philosophers on such abstruse points.* 

If it should be asked, Whether, accord- 
ing to the opinion of philosophers, we per- 
ceive the images or ideas only, and infer the 
existence and qualities of the external ob- 
ject from what we perceive in the image ; 
or, whether we really perceive the external 
object as well as its image ? — the answer 
to this question is not quite obvious, -f 

On the one hand, philosophers, if we ex- 
cept Berkeley and Hume, believe the ex- 
istence of external objects of sense, and call 
them objects of perception, though not im- 
mediate objects. But what they mean by 
a mediate object of perception I do not find 
clearly explained : whether they suit their 
language to popular opinion, and mean that 
we perceive external objects in that figura- 
tive sense in which we say that we perceive 
an absent friend when we look on his pic- 
ture ; or whether they mean that, really, 
and without a figure, we perceive both the 
external object and its idea in the mind. 
If the last be their meaning, it would follow 
that, in every instance of perception, there 
is a double object perceived: [118] that 
I perceive, for instance, one sun in the 
heavens, and another in my own mind.$ 
But I do not find that they affirm this ; 
and, as it contradicts the experience of all 
mankind, I will not impute it to them. 

It seems, therefore, that their opinion is, 
That we do not really perceive the external 
object, but the internal only ; and that, when 
they speak of perceiving external objects, 
they mean it only in a popular or in a figur- 
ative sense, as above explained. Several 
reasons lead me to think this to be the 
opinion of philosophers, beside what is 
mentioned above. First, If we do really 
perceive the external object itself, there 
seems to be no necessity, no use, for an 
image of it. Secondly, Since the time of 
Des Cartes, philosophers have very gene- 
rally thought that the existence of external 
objects of sense requires proof, andean only 
be proved from the existence of their ideas. 
Thirdly, The way in which philosophers 
speak of ideas, seems to imply that they 
are the only objects of perception. 

who held a purer and preciser doctrine of immediate 
perception than Reid himself contemplated. — H. 

* Reid him>elf, like the philos'-phers in general, 
really holds, that we do not perceive external things 
immediately, if he does not allow us a consciousness 
of the non-ego. It matters n<t whether the external 
reality be represented in a tertium quid, or in a mo- 
dification of the mind itself; in either case, it is not 
known in itself, but in something numerically dif- 
ferent.— H. 

t Notl ing can be clearer than would be this answer. 
— In perception, the external reality, (the mediate 
object,) is only known to us in and through the im- 
mediate object, i. c, the representation of which we 
are conscious, ss exi ting, and beyond the sphere of 
consciousness, the external reality i- unknown. -H. 

X " Et solem geminum et dupHces se ostendere 
Thebas!"— H. 



264 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



Having endeavoured to explain what is 
common to philosophers in accounting for 
our perception of external objects, we shall 
give some detail of their differences. 

The ideas by which we perceive external 
objects, are said by some to be the ideas of 
the Deity ; but it has been more generally 
thought, that every man's ideas are proper 
to himself, and are either in his mind, or 
in his sensorium, where the mind is imme- 
diately present. The first is the theory of 
Malebranche ; the second we shall call the 
common theory. 

With regard to that of Malebranche, it 
seems to have some affinity with the Pla- 
tonic notion of ideas,* but is not the same. 
Plato believed that there are three eternal 
first principles, from which all things have 
their origin — matter, ideas, and an efficient 
cause. Matter is that of which all things 
are made, which, by all the ancient philo- 
sophers, was conceived to be eternal. [119] 
Ideas are forms without matter of every 
kind of things which can exist ; which forms 
were also conceived by Plato to be eternal 
and immutable, and to be the models or 
patterns by which the efficient cause — that 
is, the Deity — formed every part of this 
universe. These ideas were conceived to 
be the sole objects of science, and indeed 
of all true knowledge. While we are im- 
prisoned in the body, we are prone to give 
attention to the objects of sense only ; but 
these being individual things, and in a con- 
stant fluctuation, being indeed shadows 
rather than realities, cannot be the object 
of real knowledge. All science is employed 
not about individual things, but about 
tilings universal and abstract from matter. 
Truth is eternal and immutable, and there- 
fore must have for its object eternal and 
immutable ideas ; these we are capable of 
contemplating in some degree even in our 
present state, but not without a certain 
purification of mind, and abstraction from 
the objects of sense. Such, as far as I am 
able to comprehend, were the sublime 
notions of Plato, and probably of Pytha- 
goras. 

The philosophers of the Alexandrian 
school, commonly called the latter Plato- 
nists, seem to have adopted the same sys- 
tem ; but with this difference, that they 
made the eternal ideas not to be a principle 
distinct from the Deity, but to be in the 
divine intellect, as the objects of those con- 
ceptions which the divine mind must, from 
all eternity, have had, not only of every- 



* The Platonic theory of Ideas has nothing to do 
with a doctrine of sensitive perception ; and its intro- 
duction into the question is only pregnant with con- 
fusion ; while, in regard to sensitive perceptions the 
peculiar hypothesis of Malebranche, is in fact not only 
not similar to, but much farther removed from, the 
Platonic than the common Cartesian theory, and 
the Leibnitzian — -H. 



thing which he has made, but of every pos- 
sible existence, and of all the relations of 
things.* By a proper purification and 
abstraction from the objects of sense, we 
may be in some measure united to the 
Deity, and, in the eternal light, be enabled 
to discern the most sublime intellectual 
truths. 

These Platonic notions, grafted upon 
Christianity, probably gave rise to the 
sect called Mystics, which, though in its 
spirit and principles extremely opposite to 
the Peripatetic, yet was never extinguished, 
but subsists to this day. [120] 

Many of the Fathers of the Christian 
church have a tincture of the tenets of the 
Alexandrian school ; among others, St 
Augustine. But it does not appear, as far 
as I know, that either Plato, or the latter 
Platonists, or St Augustine, or the Mystics, 
thought that we perceive the objects of 
sense in the divine ideas. They had too 
mean a notion of our perception of sensible 
objects to ascribe to it so high an origin. 
This theory, therefore, of our perceiving 
the objects of sense in the ideas of the 
Deity, I take to be the invention of Father 
Malebranche himself. He, indeed, brings 
many passages of St Augustine to counte- 
nance it, and seems very desirous to have 
that Father of his party. But in those 
passages, though the Father speaks in a 
very high strain of God's being the light of 
our minds, of our being illuminated imme- 
diately by the eternal light, and uses other 
similar expressions ; yet he seems to apply 
those expressions only to our illumination 
in moral and divine things, and not to the 
perception of objects by the senses. Mr 
Bayle imagines that some traces of this 
opinion of Malebranche are to be found in 
Amelius the Platonist, and even in Demo- 
critus; but his authorities seem to be 
strained.-J- 

Malebranche, with a very penetrating 
genius, entered into a more minute examin- 
ation of the powers of the human mind, 
than any one before him. He had the advan- 
tage of the discoveries made by Des Cartes, 
whom he followed without slavish attach- 
ment. 

He lays it down as a principle admitted 
by all philosophers, and which could not 
be called in question, that we do not per- 
ceive external objects immediately, but by 
means of images or ideas of them present 
to the mind. " I suppose," says he, " that 



* And this, though Aristotle asserts the contrary, 
was perhaps also the doctrine of Plato.— H. 

f The theory of Malebranche has been vainly 
sought for in the Bible, the Platonists, and the Fathers. 
It is, in fact, more clearly enounced in Homer than 
in any of these graver sources. 

1'oTcs ykj moos h?iv i-Tiz9oviojv otyB^raiv,^ 
OTov i<r' hyL&Z kyy^i Ta.TV,e octdfiuv te 6i£v Tc. 
But for anticipations, see Note P — H. 



[119. 120] 



chap, vii.] SENTIMENTS ABOUT EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 



265 



every one will grant that we perceive not 
the objects that are without us immediately, 
and of themselves.* We see the sun, the 
stars, and an infinity of objects without us ; 
and it is not at all likely that the soul sal- 
lies out of the body, and, as it were, takes a 
walk through the heavens, to contemplate 
all those objects. [121] She sees them not, 
therefore, by themselves ; and the imme- 
diate object of the mind, when it sees the 
sun, for example, is not the sun, but some- 
thing which is intimately united to the 
soul ; and it is that which I call an idea. 
So that by the word idea, I understand 
nothing else here but that which is the im- 
mediate object, or nearest xo the mind, 
when we perceive-]- any object.^ It ought 
to be carefully observed, that, in order to 
the mind's perceiving any object, it is abso- 
lutely necessary that the idea of that ob- 
ject be actually present to it. Of this it 

is not possible to doubt 

The things which the soul perceives are of 
two kinds. They are either in the soul, or 
they are without the soul. Those that are 
in the soul are its own thoughts — that is to 
say, all its different modifications. [For 
by these words — thought, manner of think- 
ing, or modification of the soul, I under- 
stand in general whatever cannot be in the 
niind without the mind perceiving it, as its 
proper sensations, its imaginations, its pure 
intellections, or simply its conceptions, its 
passions even, and its natural inclina- 
tions. ]§ The soul has no need of ideas for 
perceiving these things. || But with regard 
to things without the soul, we cannot per- 
ceive them but by means of ideas. "5f 

Having laid this foundation, as a prin- 
ciple common to all philosophers, and which 
admits of no doubt, he proceeds to enume- 
rate all the possible ways by which the ideas 
of sensible objects may be presented to the 
mind : Either, first, they come from the 
bodies which we perceive ; * * or, secondly, the 
soul has the power of producing them in it- 
self;-]--]- or, thirdly, they are produced by the 

• Rather in or by themselves {par eux mimes.) 
— H. 

+ That is, in the language of philosophers before 
Reid, " where we have the apprehensive cognition 
or consciousness of any object."— H. 

% In this definition, all philosophers concur. Des 
Cartes, Locke, Sec , give it in almost the same terms. 

— H. 

§ I have inserted this sentence, omitted by Reid, 
from the original, in order to shew in how exten- 
sive a meaning the term thought was used in the 
Cartesian school. See Cartesii Princ-, P. I., $ 9. — H. 

|| Hence the distinction precisely taken by Male- 
branche of Idea (idee) and Feeling, (sentiment,) cor. 
responding in principle to our Perception of the 
primary, and our Sensation of the secondary qualities. 

— H. 

IT Be la Recherche dela Verili. Liv. III., Partie 
ii.,ch. 1.— H. 

*• The common Peripatetic doctrine, &c — H. 

-ff Malebranche refers, I presume, to the opinions 
of certain Cartesians. See Gassendi 0{era, iii. p 321. 

[121, 122] 



Deity, either in our creation, or occasionally, 
as there is use for them ;* or, fourthly, the 
soul has in itself virtually and eminently, as 
the schools speak, all the perfections which 
it perceives in bodies ;-f- or, fifthly, the soul 
is united w T ith a Being possessed of all per- 
fection, who has in himself the ideas of all 
created things. 

This he takes to be a complete enumera- 
tions of all the possible ways in which the 
ideas of external objects may be presented 
to our minds. He employs a whole chapter 
upon each ; refuting the four first, and con- 
firming the last by various arguments. 
The Deity, being always present to our 
minds in a more intimate manner than any 
other being, may, upon occasion of the im- 
pressions made on our bodies, discover to us, 
as far as he thinks proper, and according 
to fixed laws, his own ideas of the object ; 
and thus we see all things in God, or in the 
divine ideas.lj: [122] 

However visionary this system may ap- 
pear on a superficial view, yet, when we 
consider that he agreed with the whole tribe 
of philosophers in conceiving ideas to be the 
immediate objects of perception, and that 
he found insuperable difficulties, and even 
absurdities, in every other hypothesis con- 
cerning them, it will not appear so wonder- 
ful that a man of very great genius should 
fall into this ; and, probably, it pleased 
so devout a man the more, that it sets, in 
the most striking light, our dependence upon 
God, and his continual presence with us. 

He distinguished, more accurately than 
any philosopher had done before, the objects 
which we perceive from the sensations in 
our own minds, which, by the laws of 
Nature, always accompany the perception 
of the object. As in many things, so par- 
ticularly in this, he has great merit. For 
this, I apprehend, is a key that opens the 
way to a right understanding, both of our 
external senses and of other powers of the 
mind. The vulgar confound sensation with 
other powers of the mind, and with their 
objects, because the purposes of life do not 
make a distinction necessary. The con- 
founding of these in common language, has 
led philosophers, in one period, to make 
those things external which really are sens- 
ations in our own minds ; and, in another 
period, running, as is usual, into the con- 

* Opiniots analogous to the second or third, were 
held by the Platonists, by some of the Greek, and 
by many of the Arabian Aristotelians. See i bove, p. 
262, note *.— H. 

f Something similar to this is hazarded by Des 
Cartes in his Third " Meditation," which it is likely 
that Malebranche had in his eye. — H. 

% It should have been noticed that the Malebranch- 
ian philosophy is fundamentally Cartesian, and that, 
after De la Forge and Geulinx, the doctrine of 
Divine Assistance, implicitly maintained by Des 
Cartes, was most ably developed by Malebranche, to 
whom it owes, ndeed, a principal share of its ceU 
brity.— H. 



266 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II 



trary extreme, to make everything almost 
to be a sensation or feeling in our minds. 

It is obvious that the system of Male- 
branche leaves no evidence of the existence 
of a material world, from what we perceive 
by our senses ; for the divine ideas, which 
are the objects immediately perceived, were 
the same before the world was created. 
Malebranche was too acute not to discern 
this consequence of his system, and too can- 
did not to acknowledge it. [123] He fairly 
owns it, and endeavours to make advantage 
of it, resting the complete evidence we have 
of the existence of matter upon the author- 
ity of revelation. He shews that the argu- 
ments brought by Des Cartes to prove the 
existence of a material world, though as 
good as any that reason could furnish, are 
not perfectly conclusive ; and, though he 
acknowledges with Des Cartes that we feel 
a strong propensity to believe the existence 
of a material world, yet he thinks this is 
not sufficient ; and that to yield to such 
propensities without evidence, is to expose 
ourselves to perpetual delusion. He thinks, 
therefore, that the only convincing evidence 
we have of the existence of a material world 
is, that we are assured by revelation that 
God created the heavens and the earth, 
and that the Word was made flesh. He is 
sensible of the ridicule to which so strange 
an opinion may expose him among those 
who are guided by prejudice ; but, for the 
sake of truth, he is willing to bear it. But 
no author, not even Bishop Berkeley, hath 
shewn more clearly, that, either upon his 
own system, or upon the common principles 
of philosophers with regard to ideas, we 
have no evidence left, either from reason 
or from our senses, of the existence of a 
material world. It is no more than justice 
to Father Malebranche, to acknowledge that 
Bishop Berkeley's arguments are to be 
found in him in their whole force. 

Mr Norris, an English divine, espoused 
the system of Malebranche, in his " Essay 
towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intel- 
lectual World," published in two volumes 
8°, anno 1701. This author has made a 
feeble effort to supply a defect which is to 
be found not in Malebranche only, but in 
almost all the authors who have treated of 
ideas — I mean, to prove their existence.* 
He has employed a whole chapter to prove 
that material things cannot be an immediate 
object of perception. His arguments are 
these : Is/, They are without the mind, and, 
therefore there can be no union between the 
object and the perception. 2dly, They are 
disproportioned to the mind, and removed 

- This is incorrect. In almost every system of 
the Aristoteiico-scholastic philosophy, the attempt is 
made to prove the existence of Species ; nor is Reid's 
asseition true even of ideas in the Cartesian philoso- 
phy. In fact, Morris's arguments are all old and 
commonplace. — H. 



from it by the whole diameter of being. 
3dly y Because, if material objects were 
immediate objects of perception, there could 
be no physical science; things necessary 
and immutable being the only objects of 
science. [124] Athly, If material things were 
perceived by themselves, they would be a 
true light to our minds, as being the intel- 
ligible form of our understandings, and con- 
sequently perfective of them, and, indeed, 
superior to them. 

Malebranche's system was adopted by 
many devout people in France of both 
sexes ; but it seems to have had no great 
currency in other countries. Mr Locke 
wrote a small tract against it, which is 
found among his posthumous works :* but, 
whether it was written in haste, or after 
the vigour of his understanding was im- 
paired by age, there is less of strength and 
solidity in it than in most of his writings. 
The most formidable antagonist Male- 
branche met with was in his own country — 
Antony Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, 
and one of the acutest writers the Jansenists 
have to boast of, though that sect has pro- 
duced many. Malebranche was a Jesuit, 
and the antipathy between the Jesuits and 
Jansenists left him no room to expect 
quarter from his learned antagonist.-]- Those 
who choose to see this system attacked on 
the one hand, and defended on the other, 
with subtilty of argument and elegance of 
expression.^: and on the part of Arnauld 
with much wit and humour, may find satis- 
faction by reading Malebranche's " Enquiry 
after Truth ;'' Arnauld's book " Of True and 
False Ideas ;" Malebranche's " Defence ;" 
and some subsequent replies and defences. 
In controversies of this kind, the assailant 
commonly has the advantage, if they are 
not unequally matched ; for it is easier to 
overturn all the theories of philosophers 
upon this subject, than to defend any one 
of them. Mr Bayle makes a very just re- 
mark upon this controversy — that the argu- 
ments of Mr Arnauld against the system of 
Malebranche, were often unanswerable, but 



* In answer to Locke's " Examination of P. Male- 
branche's Opinion," Leibnitz wrote " Remarks," 
which are to be found among his posthumous works, 
published by Raspe. — H. 

t Malebranche was not a Jesuit, but a Priest of the 
Oratory; and so little was he either a favourer or 
favourite of the Jesuits, that, by the Pere de Valois, 
he was accused of heresy, by the Pere Hardouin, of 
Atheism. The endeavours of the Jesuits in France to 
prohibit the introduction of every form of the Carte- 
sian doctrine into the public seminaries of education, 
are well known. Malebranche and Arnauld were 
therefore not opposed as Jesuit and Jansenist, and it 
should likewise be remembered that they were both 
Cartesians. — H. 

X Independently of his principal hypothesis alto- 
gether, t lie works of Malebranche deserve the most 
attentive study, both on account of the nuny ad- 
mirable thoughts and observations with which they 
abound, and because they are among the few con- 
summate models of philos phical eloquence — H. 



fl23, 124] 



chap, viii.] OF THE THEORY OF PERCEPTION, &c. 

they were capable of being retorted against 
his own system ; and his ingenious antag- 
onist knew well how to use this defence. L 1 25 ] 



267 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THE COMMON THEORY OF PERCEPTION, 
AND OF THE SENTIMENTS OF THE PERIPA- 
TETICS, AND OF DES CARTES. 

This theory, in general, is, that we per- 
ceive external objects only by certain images 
which are in our minds, or in the sensorium 
to which the rnind is immediately present. 
Philosophers in different ages have differed 
both in the names they have given to those 
images, and in their notions concerning 
them. It would be a laborious task to 
enumerate all their variations, and per- 
haps would not requite the labour. I shall 
only give a sketch of the principal dif- 
ferences with regard to their names and 
their nature. 

By Aristotle and the Peripatetics, the 
images presented to our senses were called 
sensible species or forms ; those presented 
to the memory or imagination were called 
phantasms ,• and those presented to the 
intellect were called intelligible species ; 
and they thought that there can be no 
perception, no imagination, no intellection, 
without species or phantasms,* What the 
ancient philosophers called species, sensible 
and intelligible, and phantasms, in later 
times, and especially since the time of Des 
Cartes, came to be called by the common 
name of ideas.f The Cartesians divided 
our ideas into three classes — those of sensa- 
tion, of imagination, and of pure intellection. 
Of the objects of sensation and imagination, 
they thought the images are in the brain ; % 
but of objects that are incorporeal the 
images are in the understanding or pure 
intellect. 

Mr Locke, taking the word idea in the 
same sense as Des Cartes had done before 
him, to signify whatever is meant by phan- 
tasm, notion, or species, divides ideas into 
those of sensation, and those of reflection ; 
meaning by the first, the ideas of all corpo- 
real objects, whether perceived, remem- 
bered, or imagined; by the second, the 
ideas of the powers arid operations of our 
minds. [126] What Mr Locke calls ideas, 
Mr Hume divides into two distinct kinds, 
impressions and ideas. The difference be- 
twixt these, he says, consists in the degrees 
of force and liveliness with which they strike 
upon the mind. Under impressions he com- 
prehends all our sensations, passions, and 

* See Note M.— H. 

t Not merely especially, but rnly since the time of 
Des Cartes, isee Note G.- H. 

X Incorrect. Sec Note N. — H. 
[125, 126] 



emotions, as they make their first appear- 
ance in the soul. By ideas, he means the 
faint images of these in thinking and rea- 
soning. 

Dr Hartley gives the same meaning to 
ideas as Mr Hume does, and what Mr 
Hume calls impressions he calls sensations ; 
conceiving our sensations to be occasioned 
by vibrations of the infinitesimal particles 
of the brain, and ideas by miniature vibra- 
tions or vibratiuncles. Such differences 
we find among philosophers, with regard to 
the name of those internal images of objects 
of sense which they hold to be the imme- 
diate objects of perception.* 

We shall next give a short detail of the 
sentiments of the Peripatetics and Carte- 
sians, of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, con- 
cerning them. 

Aristotle seems to have thought that the 
soul consists of two parts, or rather that 
we have two souls — the animal and the ra- 
tional ; or, as he calls them, the soul and 
the intellect.-]- To the first, belong the 
senses, memory, and imagination ; to the 
last, judgment, opinion, belief, and reason- 
ing. The first we have in common with 
brute animals ; the last is peculiar to man. 
The animal soul he held to be a certain 
form of the body, which is inseparable from 
it, and perishes at death- To this soul the 
senses belong ; and he defines a sense to be 
that which is capable of receiving the sensi- 
ble forms or species of objects, without any 
of the matter of them ; as wax receives the 
form of the seal without any of the matter 
of it. The forms of sound, of colour, of 



* Reid, 1 may observe in general, does not dis- 
tinguishes it especially behoved him to do, between 
what were held by philosophers to be the proximate 
causes of our mental representations, and these 
representations themselves as'the objects of cognition 
— i. e , between what are known in the schools as 
the species impresses, and the species expressa*. The 
former, to which the name of species, image, idea, 
was often given, in common with the latter, was held 
on all hands to be unknown to consciousness, and 
generally supposed to be merely certain occu It motions 
in the organism. The latter, the result determined 
by the former, is the mental representation, and 
the immediate or proper object in perception. Great 
confusion, to those who do not bear this distinction in 
mind, is, however, the consequence of the verbal 
ambiguity; and Reid's misrepresentations of the 
doctrine of the philosophers ig, in a great measure, to 
be traced to this source. — H. 

+ This not correct. Instead of two, the animal and 
rational, Aristotle gave to the soul three generic 
functions, the vegetable, the animal or sensual, and 
the rational; but whether he supposes these to 
constitute three concentric potences, three separate 
parts, or thr.ee distinct souls, has divided his disciples. 
He also defines the soul in general, and not, as Reid 
supposes, the mere' animal soul,' to be the form or 
tvTiXsxiiot of the body. — {Be Animal, ii. c. 1.) In- 
tellect (vSs) he however thought was inorganic; but 
there is some ground for believing that he did not 
view this as personal, but harboured an opinion 
which, under various modifications, many of his fol 
lowers also held, that the active intellect was com- 
mon to all men, immortal and divine. Km? yo>.o ^a, s 
irivret to iv ifjbiv 0w<W Xoyou 5' «.£%*i ov Xoyo; kXkcc rt 
x-gimov- vi ovv kv xgurrov xa.1 &ris~'7ifMiS imoi, T\r,t 
8i6;i — II. 



268 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



Qessay II. 



taste, and of other sensible qualities, are, 
in manner, received by the senses. * [127] 

It seems to be a necessary consequence 
of Aristotle's doctrine, that bodies are con- 
stantly sending forth, in all directions, as 
many different kinds of forms without 
matter as they have different sensible qua- 
lities ; for the forms of colour must enter 
by the eye, the forms of sound by the ear, 
and so of the other senses. This, accord- 
ingly, was maintained by the followers of 
Aristotle, though not, as far as I know, 
expressly mentioned by himself, f They 
disputed concerning the nature of those 
forms of species, whether they were real 
beings or nonentities ;$ and some held 
them to be of an intermediate nature be- 
tween the two. The whole doctrine of the 
Peripatetics and schoolmen concerning 
forms, substantial and accidental, and con- 
cerning the transmission of sensible species 
from objects of sense to the mind, if it be 
at all intelligible, is so far above my com- 
prehension that I should perhaps do it in- 
justice, by entering into it more minutely. 
Malebranche, in his " Recherche de la 
Verite," has employed a chapter to shew 
that material objects do not send forth 
sensible species of their several sensible 
qualities. 

The great revolution which Des Cartes 
produced in philosophy, was the effect of a 
superiority of genius, aided by the circum- 
stances of the times. Men had, for more 
than a thousand years, looked up to Ari- 
stotle as an oracle in philosophy. His 
authority was the test of truth. The small 
remains of the Platonic system were con- 
fined to a few mystics, whose principles and 
manner of life drew little attention. The 
feeble attempts of Ramus, and of some 
others, to make improvements in the sys- 
tem, had little effect. The Peripatetic 
doctrines were so interwoven with the whole 
system of scholastic theology, that to dissent 
from Aristotle was to alarm the Church. 
The most useful and intelligible parts, 
even of Aristotle's writings, were neglected, 
and philosophy was become an art of speak- 
ing learnedly, and disputing subtilely, with- 
out producing any invention of use in human 
life. It was fruitful of words, but barren 
of works, and admirably contrived for 
drawing a veil over human ignorance, and 



* See Note M.— H. 

t Nor is there valid ground for supposing that such 
an opinion was even implicitly held t;y the Stagirite. 
It was also explicitly repudiated by many of his fol. 
lowers. See Note M.— H. 

t The question in the schools, between ihose who 
admitted species, was not, whether species, in gene- 
ral, were real beings or nonentiti--s (which would 
have been, did they exist or not,) but whether sen- 
si le species were material, immaterial, or of a 
nature between body and spirit — a problem, it must 
b • allowed, sufficiently futile, but not, like the other, 
self-contraclictow.— h. 



putting a stop to the progress of knowledge, 
by filling men with a conceit that they 
knew everything. [128] It was very fruitful 
also in controversies ; but, for the most part, 
they were controversies about words, or 
about things of no moment, or things above 
the reach of the human faculties. And the 
issue of them was what might be expected — 
that the contending parties fought, without 
gaining or losing an inch of ground, till they 
were weary of the dispute, or their atten- 
tion was called off to some other subject.* 

Such was the philosophy of the schools of 
Europe, during many ages of darkness and 
barbarism that succeeded the decline of the 
Roman empire ; so that there was great 
need of a reformation in philosophy as well 
as in religion. The light began to dawn at 
last ; a spirit of inquiry sprang up, and 
men got the courage to doubt of the dogmas 
of Aristotle, as well as of the decrees of 
Popes. The most important step in the 
reformation of religion, was to destroy 
the claim of infallibility, which hindered 
men from using their judgment in matters 
of religion ; and the most important step in 
the reformation of philosophy, was to destroy 
the authority of which Aristotle had so long 
had peaceable possession. The last had 
been attempted by Lord Bacon and others, 
with no less zeal than the first by Luther 
and Calvin. 

Des Cartes knew well the defects of the 
prevailing system, which had begun to lose 
its authority. His genius enabled him, and 
his spirit prompted him, to attempt a new 
one. He had applied much to the mathe- 
matical sciences, and had made considerable 
improvement in them. He wished to in- 
troduce that perspicuity and evidence into 
other branches of philosophy which he 
found iii them. 

Being sensible how apt we are to be led 
astray by prejudices of education, he thought 
the only way to avoid error was to resolve 
to doubt of everything, and hold everything 
to be uncertain, even those things which 
he had been taught to hold as most certain, 
until he had such clear and cogent evidence 
as compelled his assent. [129] 

In this state of universal doubt, that 
which first appeared to him to be clear and 
certain, was his own existence. Of this he 
was certain, because he was conscious that he 
thought, that he reasoned, and that he 
doubted. He used this argument, there- 
fore, to prove his own existence, Cojjito, 
ergo sum. This he conceived to be the first 
of all truths, the foundation-stone upon 
which the whole fabric of human knowledge 



* This is the vulgar opinion in regard to the 
scholastic philosophy. The few are, however, now 
aware that the human mind, though partially, vns 
never more powerfully developed than during the 
middle ages.— H. 

["127-129] 



chap, viii.] OF THE THEORY OF PERCEPTION, &c. 



269 



is built, and on which it must rest.* And, 
as Archimedes thought that, if he had one 
fixed point to rest his engines upon, he 
could move the earth ; so Des Cartes, 
charmed with the discovery of one certain 
principle, by which he emerged from the 
state of universal doubt, believed that this 
principle alone would be a sufficient found- 
ation on which he might build the whole 
system of science. He seems, therefore, to 
have taken no great trouble to examine 
whether there might not be other first prin- 
ciples, which, on account of their own light 
and evidence, ought to be admitted by 
every man of sound judgment, -f- The love 
of simplicity so natural to the mind of man, 
led him to apply the whole force of his mind 
to raise the fabric of knowledge upon this 
one principle, rather than seek a broader 
foundation. 

Accordingly, he does not admit the evi- 
dence of sense to be a first principle, as he 
does that of consciousness. The argu- 
ments of the ancient sceptics here occurred 
to him, that our senses often deceive us, 
and therefore ought never to be trusted on 
their own authority : that, in sleep, we often 
seem to see and hear things which we are 
convinced to have had no existence. But 
that which chiefly led Des Cartes to think 
that he ought not to trust to his senses, 
without proof of their veracity, was, that he 
took it for granted, as all philosophers had 
done before him, that he did not perceive 
external objects themselves, but certain 
images of them in his own mind, called 
ideas. He was certain, by consciousness, 
that he had the ideas of sun and moon, 
earth and sea ; but how could he be assured 
that there really existed external objects 
like to these ideas ?% [130] 

Hitherto he was uncertain of everything 
but of his own existence, and the existence 
of the operations and ideas of his own mind. 
Some of his disciples,, it is said, remained at 
this stage of his system, and got the name 
of Egoists. § They could not find evidence 
in the subsequent stages of his progress. 
But Des Cartes resolved not to stop here ; 
he endeavoured to prove, by a new argu- 
ment, drawn from his idea of a Deity, the 
existence of an infinitely perfect Being, who 
made him and all his faculties. From the 
perfection of this Being, he inferred that he 
could be no deceiver ; and therefore con- 
cluded that his senses, and the other facul- 
ties he found in himself, are not fallacious, 



• On the Cartesian doubt, see Note R. — H. 

t This cannot justly be affirmed of Des Cartes. 
— H 

X On this point it is probable that Des Cartes and 
Reid are at one. See Notes C and N — H. 

§ I am doubtful about the existence of this sup- 
posed sect of Egcsts. The Chevalier Ramsay, 
above a centurv ago, incidentally speaks of this doc. 
trine as an offshoot of Spinozism, and under the 
[130, 131J 



but may be trusted, when a proper use is 
made of them. 

The system of Des Cartes is, with great 
perspicuity and acuteness, explained by 
himself in his writings, which ought to be 
consulted by those who would understand it. 
The merit of Des Cartes cannot be easily 
conceived by those who have not some 
notion of the Peripatetic system, in which 
he was educated. To throw off the preju- 
dices of education, and to create a system of 
nature, totally different from that which 
had subdued the understanding of mankind, 
and kept it in subjection for so many cen- 
turies, required an uncommon force of mind. 
The world which Des Cartes exhibits to 
our view, is not only in its structure very 
different from that of the Peripatetics, but 
is, as we may say, composed of different 
materials. 

In the old system, everything was, by a 
kind of metaphysical sublimation, resolved 
into principles so mysterious that it may be 
a question whether they were words with- 
out meaning, or were notions too refined for 
tiuman understanding. 

All that we observe in nature is, accord- 
ing to Aristotle, a constant succession of 
the operations of generation and corruption. 
[131 ] The principles of generation are mat- 
ter and form. The principle of corruption is 
privation. All natural things are produced 
or generated by the union of matter and 
form ; matter being, as it were, the mother, 
and form the father. As to matter, or the 
first matter, as it is called, it is neither 
substance uor accident ; it has no quality 
or property ; it is nothing actually, but 
everything potentially. It has so strong 
an appetite for form, that it is no sooner 
divested of one form than it is clothed with 
another, and is equally susceptibie of all 
forms successively. It has no nature, but 
only the capacity of having any one. 

This is the account which the Peripate- 
tics give of the first matter. The other 
principle of generation is form, act, perfec- 
tion ; for these three words signify the same 
thing. But we must not conceive form to 
consist in the figure, size, arrangement, or 
motion of the parts of matter. These, in- 
deed, are accidental forms, by which things 



name of Egomisme. But Father Buffier, about the 
same time, and, be it noted, in a work published some 
ten years before Hume's " Treatise of Human Na- 
tute," talks of it, on hearsay, as the speculation ot a 
Scotch philosopher: — " Unecrivain I.cossoisapublie, 
ciit on, un ouvragepour prouverqu'il n'avoit aucune 
evidence de l'existence d'aucun etre quedelui; et 
encore de lui, en tant qu' esprit; n'aiant aucune de- 
monstration veritable de l'existence d'aucun corps." 
—EUmens de Metuphysique, j 61. Now, we know 
that there is no sucn work. I am aware, however, 
that there is some discussion on this point'in the 
" Memoirs tie Trevoux," anno 1713, p. 922 ; to which 
however, I must refer the reader, as I have notthat 
journal at hand.— But more of this below, undef 
p 187.— H. 



270 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essa y 



artificial are formed : but every production 
of Nature has a substantial form,* which, 
joined to matter, makes it to be what it is. 
The substantial form is a kind of informing 
soul, which gives the thing its specific na- 
ture, and all its qualities, powers, and 
activity. Thus the substantial form of 
heavy bodies, is that which makes them 
descend ; of light bodies, that which makes 
them ascend. The substantial form of 
gold, is that which gives it its ductility, its 
fusibility, its weight, its colour, and all its 
qualities ; and the same is to be understood of 
every natural production. A change in the 
accidental form of any body, is alteration 
only ; but a change in the substantial form 
is generation and corruption : it is corrup- 
tion with respect to the substantial form, of 
which the body is deprived ; it is genera- 
tion with respect to the substantial form 
that succeeds. Thus, when a horse dies 
and turns to dust, the philosophical account 
of the phenomenon is this : — A certain por- 
tion of the materia prima, which was joined 
to the substantial form of a horse, is de- 
prived of it by privation, and in the same 
instant is invested with the substantial form 
of earth. [132] As every substance must 
have a substantial form, there are some of 
those forms inanimate, some vegetative, 
some animal, and some rational. The three 
former kinds can only subsist in matter ; 
but the last, according to the schoolmen, is 
immediately created by God, and infused 
into the body, making one substance with 
it, while they are united ; yet capable of 
being disjoined from the body, and of sub- 
sisting by itself. 

Such are the principles of natural things in 
the Peripatetic system. It retains so much 
of the ancient Pythagorean doctrine, that 
we cannot ascribe the invention of it solely 
to Aristotle, although he, no doubt, made 
considerable alterations in it. The first 
matter was probably the same in both sys- 
tems, and was in both held to be eternal. 
They differed more about form. The Py- 
thagoreans and Platonists held forms or 
ideas, as they called them, to be eternal, 
immutable, and self-existent. Aristotle 
maintained that they were not eternal, nor 
self-existent. On the other hand, he did 
not allow them to be produced, but educed 
from matter ; yet he held them not to be 
actually in the matter from which they are 
educed, but potentially only. But these 
two systems differed less from one another, 
than that of Des Cartes did from both. 

In the world of Des Cartes we meet with 
two kinds of beings only — to wit, body and 
mind ; the first the object of our senses, 

* It is not, however, to be supposed that the 
scholastic doctrine of Substanti.il Forms receives any 
countenance from the authority of Aristotle, if we 
lav aside his language touching the soul — H. 



the other of consciousness ; both of them 
things of which we have a distinct appre- 
hension, if the human mind be capable of 
distinct apprehension at all. To the first, 
no qualities are ascribed but extension, 
figure, and motion ; to the last, nothing but 
thought, and its various modifications, of 
which we are conscious." He could ob- 
serve no common attribute, no resembling 
feature, in the attributes of body and mind, 
and therefore concluded them to be distinct 
substances, and totally of a different nature ; 
and that body, from its very nature, is in- 
animate aud inert, incapable of any kind of 
thought or sensation, or of producing any 
change or alteration in itself. [133] 

Des Cartes must be allowed the honour 
of being the first who drew a distinct line 
between the material and intellectual world, 
which, in all the old systems, were so 
blended together that it was impossible to 
say where the one ends and the other be- 
gins, -f- How much this distinction hath 
contributed to the improvements of modern 
times, in the philosophy both of body and 
of mind, is not easy to say. 

One obvious consequence of this distinc- 
tion was, that accurate reflection on the 
operations of our own mind is the only way 
to make any progress in the knowledge of 
it. Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and 
Hume, were taught this lesson by Des 
Cartes ; and to it we owe their most va- 
luable discoveries in this branch of philo- 
sophy. The analogical way of reasoning 
concerning the powers of the mind from the 
properties of body, which is the source of 
almost all the errors on this subject, and 
which is so natural to the bulk of mankind, 
was as contrary to the principles of Des 
Cartes, as it was agreeable to the princi- 
ples of the old philosophy. We may there- 
fore truly say, that, in that part of philoso- 
phy which relates to the mind, Des Cartes 
laid the foundation, and put us into that 
tract which all wise men now acknowledge 
to be the only one in which we can expect 
success. 

With regard to physics, or the philosophy 
of body, if Des Cartes had not the merit of 
leading men into the right tract, we must 
allow him that of bringing them out of a 
wrong one. The Peripatetics, by assigning 
to every species of body a particular sub- 
stantial form, which produces, in an un- 
known manner, all the effects we observe 
in it, put a stop to all improvement in this 
branch of philosophy. Gravity and levity, 
fluidity and hardness, heat and cold, were 
qualities arising from the substantial form 
of the bodies to which they belonged. Gen- 



* In the Cartesian language, the term thought in. 
eluded all of which we are conscious — H. 

+ This assertion is true in general ; but some in. 
dividual exceptions might betaken. — H. 

f 132, 133] 



chap, vm.] OF THE THEORY OF PERCEPTION, &c. 



271 



eration and corruption, substantial forms 
and occult qualities, were always at hand, 
to resolve every phenomenon. This phi- 
losophy, therefore, instead of accounting 
for any of the phenomena of Nature, con- 
trived only to give learned names to their 
unknown causes, and fed men with the husks 
of barbarous terms, instead of the fruit of 
real knowledge. [ 1 34 ] 

By the spreading of the Cartesian system, 
materia prima, substantial forms, and oc- 
cult qualities, with all the jargon of the 
Aristotelian physics, fell into utter disgrace, 
and were never mentioned by the followers 
of the new system, but as a subject of ridi- 
cule. Men became sensible that their un- 
derstanding had been hoodwinked by those 
hard terms. They were now accustomed 
to explain the phsenomena of nature, by 
the figure, size, and motion of the particles 
of matter, things perfectly level to human 
understanding, and could relish nothing in 
philosophy that was dark and unintelligible. 
Aristotle, after a reign of more than a 
thousand years, was now exposed as an 
object of derision even to the vulgar, arrayed 
in the mock majesty of his substantial forms 
and occult qualities. The ladies became 
fond of a philosophy which was easily learned, 
and required no words too harsh for their 
delicate organs. Queens and princesses, 
the most distinguished personages of the 
age, courted the conversation of Des Cartes, 
and became adepts in his philosophy. Wit- 
ness Christina, Queen of Sweden, and 
Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick, King of 
Bohemia, the mother of our Royal Family. 
The last, though very young when Des 
Cartes wrote his " Principia," he declares 
to be the only person he knew, who per- 
fectly understood not only all his philoso- 
phical writings, but the most abstruse of 
his mathematical works. 

That men should rush with violence from 
one extreme, without going more or less 
into the contrary extreme, is not to be ex- 
pected from the weakness of human nature. 
Des Cartes and his followers were not ex- 
empted from this weakness ; they thought 
that extension, figure, and motion, were 
sufficient to resolve all the phsenomena of 
the material system. To admit other qua- 
lities, whose cause is unknown, was to 
return to Egypt, from which they had been 
so happily delivered. [135] 

When Sir Isaac Newton's doctrine of 
gravitation was published, the great objec- 
tion to it, which hindered its general recep- 
tion in Europe for half a century, was, that 
gravitation seemed to be an occult quality, 
as it could not be accounted for by exten- 
sion, figure, and motion, the known attri- 
butes of body. They who defended him 
found it difficult to answer this objection to 
the satisfaction of those who had been 
[134-1361 



initiated in the principles of the Cartesian 
system. But, by degrees, men came to 
be sensible that, in revolting from Ari- 
stotle, the Cartesians had gone into the oppo- 
site extreme ; experience convinced them 
that there are qualities in the material 
world, whose existence is certain though 
their cause be occult. To acknowledge this, 
is only a candid confession of human ignor- 
ance, than which there is nothing more be- 
coming a philosopher. 

As all that we can know of the mind must 
be derived from a careful observation of its 
operations in ourselves ; so all that we can 
know of the material system must be derived 
from what can be discovered by our senses. 
Des Cartes was not ignorant of this ; nor 
was his system so unfriendly to observation 
and experiment as the old system was.* 
He made many experiments, and called 
earnestly upon all lovers of truth to aid him 
in this way ; but, believing that all the 
phsenomena of the material world are the 
result of extension, figure, and motion, and 
that the Deity always combines these, so as 
to produce the phsenomena in the simplest 
manner possible, he thought that, from a 
few experiments, he might be able to dis- 
cover the simplest way in which the obvious 
phsenomena of nature can be produced by 
matter and motion only ; and that this must 
be the way in which they are actually pro- 
duced. H is conj ectures were ingenious, upon 
the principles he had adopted ; but they are 
found to be so far from the truth, that they 
ought for ever to discourage philosophers 
from trusting to conjecture in the operations 
of nature. [136] 

The vortices or whirlpools of subtile 
matter by which Des Cartes endeavoured 
to account for the phsenomena of the ma- 
terial world, are now found to be fictions, 
no less than the sensible species of Ari- 
stotle. -J- 

It was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton to 
point out clearly the road to the knowledge 
of nature's works. Taught by Lord Bacon 
to despise hypotheses as the fictions of hu- 
man fancy, he laid it down as a rule of 
philosophising, that no causes of natural 
things ought to be assigned but such as can 
be proved to have a real existence. He 
saw that all the length men can go in ac- 
counting for phsenomena, is to discover the 
laws of nature according to which they are 
produced ; and, therefore, that the true 
method of philosophising is this : From 
real facts, ascertained by observation and 
experiment, to collect by just induction the 



* That is, the Aristotelic. But Aristotle himself 
was as declared an advocate of experiment as any 
philosopher ; and it is not to be imputed to him that 
his authority had subsequently the effect of imped- 
ing, by being held to supersede, observation — H. 

-f- Read "the sensible species of the schoolmen." 
See Kote M.— H. 



272 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



f ESSAY II. 



laws of Nature, and to apply the laws so 
discovered, to account for the phsenomena 
of Nature. 

Thus, the natural philosopher has the 
rules of his art fixed with no less precision 
than the mathematician, and may be no less 
certain when he keeps within them, and 
when he deviates from them. And, though 
the evidence of a law of nature from induc- 
tion is not demonstrative, it is the only kind 
of evidence on which all the most import- 
ant affairs of human life must rest. 

Pursuing this road without deviation, 
Newton discovered the laws of our planet- 
ary system, and of the rays of light ; and 
gave the first and the noblest examples of 
that chaste induction which Lord Bacon 
could only delineate in theory. 

How strange is it that the human mind 
should have wandered for so many ages, 
without falling into this tract ! How much 
more strange, that, after it has been clearly 
discovered, and a happy progress made in it, 
many choose rather to wander in the fairy 
regions of hypothesis ! [137] 

To return to Des Cartes's notions of the 
manner of our perceiving external objects, 
from which a concern to do justice to the 
merit of that great reformer in philosophy 
has led me to digress, he took it for granted, 
as the old philosophers had done, that what 
we immediately perceive must be either in 
the mind itself, or in the brain, to which 
the mind is immediately present. The im- 
pressions made upon our organs, nerves, 
and brain could be nothing, according to 
his philosophy, but various modifications of 
extension, figure, and motion. There could 
be nothing in the brain like sound or colour, 
taste or smell, heat or cold ; these are sens- 
ations in the mind, which, by the laws of 
the union of soul and body, are raised on 
occasion of certain traces in the brain ; and 
although he gives the name of ideas to those 
traces in the brain, he does not think it 
necessary that they should be perfectly 
like to the things which they represent, 
any more than that words or signs should 
resemble the things they signify. But, 
says he, that we may follow tne received 
opinion as far as is possible, we may allow 
a slight resemblance. Thus we know that 
a print in a book may represent houses, 
temples, and groves ; and so far is it from 
being necessary that the print should be 
perfectly like the thing it represents, that 
its perfection often requires the contrary : 
for a circle must often be represented by an 
ellipse, a square by a rhombus, and so of 
other things.* 



* But be it observed that Des Cartes did not allow, 
far less hold, that the mind had any cognizance of 
these organic motions — of these material ideas They 
were merely the antecedents, established by the law of 
union, of the mental idea ; which mental idea was no- 



The perceptions of sense, he thought, are 
to be referred solely to the union of soul 
and body. They commonly exhibit to ua 
only what may hurt or profit our bodies ; 
and rarely, and by accident only, exhibit 
things as they are in themselves. It is by 
observing this, that we must learn to throw 
off the prejudices of sense, and to attend 
with our intellect to the ideas which are by 
nature implanted in.it. By this means we 
shall understand that the nature of matter 
does not consist in those things that affect 
our senses, such as colour, or smell, or taste ; 
but only in this, that it is something ex- 
tended in length, breadth, and depth. [138] 

The writings of Des Cartes have, in ge- 
neral, a remarkable degree of perspicuity ; 
and he undoubtedly intended that, in this 
particular, his philosophy should be a per- 
fect contrast to that of Aristotle ; yet, in 
what he has said, in different parts of his 
writings, of our perceptions of external 
objects, there seems to be some obscurity, 
and even inconsistency ; whether owing to 
his having had different opinions on the sub- 
ject at different times, or to the difficulty he 
found in it, I will not pretend to say. 

There are two points, in particular, 
wherein I cannot reconcile him to himself ; 
the first, regarding the place of the ideas 
or images of external objects, which are the 
immediate objects of perception ; the second. 
with regard to the veracity of our external 
senses. 

As to the first, he sometimes places the 
ideas of material objects in the brain, not 
only when they are perceived, but when 
they are remembered or imagined; and 
this has always been held to be the Car- 
tesian doctrine;* yet he sometimes says, 
that we are not to conceive the images or 
traces in the brain to be perceived, as if 
there were eyes in the brain ; these traces 
are only occasions on which, by the laws of 
the union of soul and body, ideas are ex- 
cited in the mind ; and, therefore, it is not 
necessary that there should be an exact 
resemblance between the traces and the 
things represented by them, any more than 
that words or signs should be exactly like 
the things signified by them.-f- 

These two opinions, I think, cannot be 
reconciled. For, if the images or traces in 
the brain are perceived,* they must be the 



thing more than a modification of the mind itself.— 
H, 

* But not in Reid's exclusive sense of the word 
Idea.— H. 

t The non-negation, in this instance, of all re- 
semblance between the material Ideas, or organic 
motions in the brain, and the external reality, is one 
of the occasional instances of Des Cartes's reticence of 
his subordinate doctrines, in order to avoid all useless 
tilting against prevalent opinions. Another is his 
sometimes giving to these motions the name of Spe. 
cies. — H. 

£ Which, in Des Cartes' doctrine, they are not. — H. 



[137, 138] 



chap, viii.] OF THE THEORY OF PERCEPTION, &c. 



2/3 



objects of perception, and not the occasions 
of it only. On the other hand, if they are 
only the occasions of our pei*ceiving, they 
are not perceived at all. Des Cartes seems 
to have hesitated between the two opinions, 
or to have passed from the one to the 
other.* Mr Locke seems, in like manner, 
to have wavered between the two ; some- 
times representing the ideas of material 
things as being in the brain, but more fre- 
quently as in the mind itself. -J- [139] 
Neither Des Cartes nor Mr Locke could, 
consistently with themselves, attribute any 
other qualities to images in the brain but 
extension, figure, and motion ; for as to 
those qualities which Mr Locke distin- 
guished by the name of secondary qualities, 
both philosophers believed them not to be- 
long to body at all,J and, therefore, could 
not ascribe them to images in the brain. § 

Sir Isaac Newton and Dr Samuel Clarke 
uniformly speak of the species or images of 
material things as being in that part of the 
brain called the sensorium, and perceived 
by the mind there present ; but the former 
speaks of this point only incidentally, and 
with his usual modesty, in the form of a 
query. || Malebranche is perfectly clear and 
unambiguous in this matter. According to 
his system, the images or traces in the 
brain are not perceived at all — they are 
only occasions upon which, by the laws of 
Nature, certain sensations are felt by us, 
and certain of the divine ideas discovered to 
our minds. 

The second point on which Des Cartes 
seems to waver, is with regard to the credit 
that is due to the testimony of our senses. 

Sometimes, from the perfection of the 
Deity, and his being no deceiver, he infers 
that our senses and our other faculties can- 
not be fallacious ; and since we seem clearly 
to perceive that the idea of matter comes 
to us from things external, which it per- 
fectly resembles, therefore we must con- 
clude that there really exists something 
extended in length, breadth, and depth, 
having all the properties which we clearly 
perceive to belong to an extended thing. 

At other times, we find Des Cartes and 
his followers making frequent complaints, 



• Des Cartes had only one opinion on the point. 
The difficulty which perplexes Reid arose from his 
want of a systematic comprehension of the Cartesian 
philosophy, and his being unaware that, by Ideas, 
Des Cartes designated two very different things — viz. , 
the proximate bodily antecedent, and the mental 
consequent— H. 

+ Locke's opinion, if he had a precise one on the 
matter, it is impossible to ascertain. See Note O. — 
H. 

t See above, p. 205, note * — H. 

§ Yet Locke expressly denies them to be modifica- 
tions of mind. See Note O.— H. 

|| Reid is correct in all he here says of Newton and 
Clarke; it is indeed virtually admitted by Clarke 
himself, in his controversy wi h Leibnitz. Compare 
Le;bnitii Opera, II., p. 161, and p. 182.— H. 
fl-39, UO] 



as all the ancient philosophers did, of the 
fallacies of sense. He warns us to throw 
off its prejudices, and to attend only with 
our intellect, to the ideas implanted there. 
By this means we may perceive, that the 
nature of matter does not consist in hard- 
ness, colour, weight, or any of those things 
that affect our senses, but in this only, that 
it is something extended in length, breadth, 
and depth. [140] The senses, he says, 
are only relative to our present state ; they 
exhibit things only as they tend to profit 
or to hurt us, and rarely, and by accident 
only, as they are in themselves. * 

It was probably owing to an aversion to 
admit anything into philosophy, of which 
we have not a clear and distinct concep- 
tion, that Des Cartes was led to deny that 
there is any substance of matter distinct from 
those qualities of it which we perceive. -f- 
We say that matter is something extended, 
figured, moveable. Extension, figure, mo- 
bility, therefore, are not matter, but quali- 
ties, belonging to this something, which 
we call matter. Des Cartes could not 
relish this obscure something, which is sup- 
posed to be the subject or substratum of 
those qualities ; and, therefore, maintained 
that extension is the very essence of mat- 
ter. But, as we must ascribe extension to 
space as well as to matter, he found him- 
self under a necessity of holding that space 
and matter are the same thing, and differ 
only in our way of conceiving them ; so 
that, wherever there is space there is mat- 
ter, and no void left in the universe. The 
necessary consequence of this is, that the 
material world has no bounds nor limits. 
He did not, however, choose to call it in- 
finite, but indefinite. 

It was probably owing to the same cause 
that Des Cartes made the essence of the 
soul to consist in thought. He would not 
allow it to be an unknown something that 
has the power of thinking ; it cannot, there- 
fore, be without thought ; and, as he con- 
ceived that there can be no thought with- 
out ideas, the soul must have had ideas in 
its first formation, which, of consequence, 
are innate. J 

The sentiments of those who came after 
Des Cartes, with regard to the nature of 
body and mind, have been various. Many 
have maintained that body is only a collec- 
tion of qualities to which we give one 



* But see " Principia," \ 66, sqq — H. 

t See Stewart's " Elements," 1., Note A ; Royer 
Collard's Fragment, VIIL— H. 

% The doctrine of Des Cartes, in relation to Innate 
Ideas, has been very generally misunderstood ; and 
by no one more than by Locke. What it really 
amounted to, is clearly stated in his strictures on 
the Program of Regius. Justice has latterly been 
donehim, among others, by Mr .Stewart, in his " Dis. 
sertation," and by M. Laromiguiere, in his " Cours." 
See also the old controversy of De Vries with Rbell 
on i his point — H. 

T 



274 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



name ; and that the notion of a subject of 
inhesion, to which those qualities belong, 
is only a fiction of the mind.* [141] 
Some have even maintained that the soul 
is only a succession of related ideas, with- 
out any subject of inhesion. -f- It appears, 
by what has been said, how far these no- 
tions are allied to the Cartesian system. 

The triumph of the Cartesian system 
over that of Aristotle, is one of the most 
remarkable revolutions in the history of phi- 
losophy, and has led me to dwell longer 
upon it than the present subject perhaps 
required. The authority of Aristotle was 
now no more. That reverence for hard 
words and dark notions, by which men's 
understanding had been strangled in early 
years, was turned into contempt, and every- 
thing euspected which was not clearly and 
distinctly understood. This is the spirit of 
the Cartesian philosophy, and is a more 
important acquisition to mankind than any 
of its particular tenets ; and for exerting 
this spirit so zealously, and spreading it so 
successfully, Des Cartes deserves immortal 
honour. 

It is to be observed, however, that Des 
Cartes rejected a part only of the ancient 
theory, concerning the perception of ex- 
ternal objects by the senses, and that he 
adopted the other part. That theory may 
be divided into two parts : The first, that 
images, species, orforms of external objects, 
come from the object, and enter by the 
avenues of the senses to the mind; the 
second part is, That the external object 
itself is not perceived, but only the species 
or image of it in the mind. The first part 
Des Cartes and his followers rejected, and 
refuted by solid arguments ; but the second 
part, neither he nor his followers have 
thought of calling in question ; being per- 
suaded that it is only a representative 
image in the mind of the external object 
that we perceive, and not the object itself. 
And this image, which the Peripatetics 
called a species, he calls an idea, changing 
the name only, while he admits the thing. % 
[142] 

It seems strange that the great pains 
which this philosopher took to throw off the 
prejudices of education, to dismiss all his 
former opinions, and to assent to nothing, 
till he found evidence that compelled his 
assent, should not have led him to doubt of 
this opinion of the ancient philosophy. It 
is evidently a philosophical opinion ; for the 
vulgar undoubtedly believe that it is the 

* As Locke, (but he is not consistent,) Law, 
Green, Watts, and others. See Cousin, " Cours de 
Philosophie," lome II., Lecon xviii. — H. 

t Hume— H. 

t Des Cartes and Reid coincide in doctrine, if 
Reid holds that we know the extended and exter. 
nal object only, by a conception or subjective modifi- 
tion of the percipient mind. See Notes N and C— H. 



external object which we immediately per- 
ceive, and not a representative image of it 
only. It is for this reason that they look 
upon it as perfect lunacy to call in question 
the existence of external objects.* 

It seems to be admitted as a first prin- 
ciple, by the learned and the unlearned, that 
what is really perceived must exist, and that 
to perceive what does not exist is impossible. 
So far the unlearned man and the philoso- 
pher agree. The unlearned man says — I 
perceive the external object, and I perceive 
it to exist. Nothing can be more absurd 
than to doubt of it. The Peripatetic says — 
What I perceive is the very identical form 
of the object, which came immediately from 
the object, and makes an impression upon 
my mind, as a seal does upon wax ; and, 
therefore, I can have no doubt of the ex- 
istence of an object whose form I perceive. -f- 
But what says the Cartesian ? I perceive 
not, says he, the external object itself. So 
far he agrees with the Peripatetic, and diners 
from the unlearned man. But I perceive 
an image, or form, or idea, in my own 
mind, or hi my brain. I am certain of the 
existence of the idea, because I imme- 
diately perceive it.-f- But how this idea is 
formed, or what it represents, is not self- 
evident ; and therefore I must find argu- 
ments by which, from the existence of the 
idea which I perceive, I can infer the ex- 
istence of an external object which it re- 
presents. 

As I take this to be a just view of the 
principles of the unlearned man, of the Peri- 
patetic, and of the Cartesian, so I think 
they all reason consequentially from their 
several principles : that the Cartesian has 
strong grounds to doubt of the existence of 
external objects ; the Peripatetic very little 
ground of doubt ; and the unlearned [143] 
man none at all : and that the difference of 
their situation arises from this— that the un- 
learned man has no hypothesis ; the Peri- 
patetic leans upon an hypothesis ; and the 
Cartesian upon one half of that hypothesis. 

Des Cartes, according to the spirit of his 
own philosophy, ought to have doubted of 
both parts of the Peripatetic hypothesis, or to 
have given his reasons why he adopted one 
part, as well as why he rejected the other 



* This is one of the passages which favour the 
opinion that Reid did suppose the non-ego to be 
known in itself as existing, and not only in and 
through the ego ; for mankind in general believe 
that the extended reality, as perceived, is something 
more than a mere internal representation by the 
mind, suggested in consequence of the impression 
made by an unknown something on the sense. See 
Note C— H. 

f The Peripatetic and the Cartesian held that the 
species or idea was an object of consciousness. If- 
Reid understood the language he uses, he must hold 
that the external and extended reality is an object of 
consciousness. But this does not quadrate with his 
doctrine, that we only know extension and figure by 
a suggested conception in the mind. See Note C. — H. 
[141-113] 



chap, ix.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MR LOCKE. 



275 



part ; especially, since the unlearned, who 
have the faculty of perceiving objects by 
their senses in no less perfection than 
philosophers, and should, therefore, know, 
as well as they, what it is they perceive, 
have been unanimous in this, that the 
objects they perceive are not ideas in their 
own minds, but things external. It might 
have been expected that a philosopher who 
was so cautious as not to take his own ex- 
istence for granted without proof, would not 
have taken it for granted without proof, 
that everything he perceived was only ideas 
in his own mind. 

But, if Des Cartes made a rash step in 
this, as I apprehend he did, he ought not 
to bear the blame alone. His successors 
have still continued in the same track, and, 
after his example, have adopted one part of 
the ancient theory — to wit, that the objects 
we immediately perceive are ideas only. All 
their svstems are built on this foundation. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MR LOCKE. 

The reputation which Locke's "Essay on 
Human Understanding" had at home from 
the beginning, and which it has gradually 
acquired abroad, is a sufficient testimony of 
its merit. [144] There is, perhaps, no 
book of the metaphysical kind that has been 
so generally read by those who understand 
the language, or that is more adapted to 
teach men to think with precision,* and to 
inspire them with that candour and love of 
truth which is the genuine spirit of philo- 
sophy. He gave, I believe, the first ex- 
ample in the English language of writing 
on such abstract subjects, with a remarkable 
degree of simplicity and perspicuity ; and 
in this he has been happilv imitated by 
others that came after him. No author 
hath more successfully pointed out the 
danger of ambiguous words, and the im- 
portance of having distinct and determin- 
ate notions in judging and reasoning. His 
observations on the various powers of the 
human understanding, on the use and abuse 
of words, and on the extent and limits of 
human knowledge, are drawn from atten- 
tive reflection on the operations of his own 
mind, the true source of all real knowledge 
on these subjects ; and shew an uncommon 
degree of penetration and judgment. But 
he needs no panegyric of mine, and I men- 
tion these things, only that, when I have 
occasion to differ from him, I may not be 
thought insensible of the merit of an author 
whom I highly respect, and to whom I owe 



* To praise Locke for precision, is rather too 
much. — H. 
[144, 145] 



my first lights in those studies, as well as 
my attachment to them. 

He sets out in his essay with a full con- 
viction, common to him with other philo- 
sophers, that ideas in the mind are the 
objects of all our thoughts in every opera- 
tion of the understanding. This leads him 
to use the word idea* so very frequently, 
beyond what was usual in the English 
language, that he thought it necessary, in 
his introduction, to make this apology : — 
" It being that term,'' says he, "which, I 
I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever 
is the object of understanding when a man 
thinks, I have used it to express whatever 
is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or 
whatever it is which the mind can be em- 
ployed about in thinking ; and I could not 
avoid frequently using it. I presume it 
will be granted me, that there are such 
ideas in men's minds ; every man is con- 
scious of them in himself, and men's words 
and actions will satisfy him that they are in 
others." [145] 

Speaking of the reality of cur knowledge, 
he says, " It is evident the mind knows not 
things immediately, but only by the inter- 
vention of the ideas it has of them. Our 
knowledge, therefore, is real, only so far as 
there is a conformity between our ideas and 
the reality of things. But what shall be 
here the criterion ? How shall the mind, 
when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, 
know that they agree with things them- 
selves ? This, though it seems not to want 
difficulty, yet, I think, there be two sorts 
of ideas that we may be assured agree with 
things." 

We see that Mr Locke was aware, no 
less than Des Cartes, that the doctrine o< 
ideas made it necessary, and at the samf 
time difficult, to prove the existence of 9 
material world without us ; because th« 
mind, according to that doctrine, perceives 
nothing but a world of ideas in itself. Not 
only Des Cartes, but Malebranche, Arnauld., 
and Norris, had perceived this difficulty, 
and attempted to remove it with little suc- 
cess. Mr Locke attempts the same thing ; 
but his arguments are feeble. He even 
seems to be conscious of this ; for he con- 
cludes his reasoning with this observation 
— " That we have evidence sufficient to 
direct us in attaining the good and avoiding 
the evil, caused by external objects, and 
that this is the important concern we have 
in being made acquainted with them." This, 
indeed, is saying no more than will be 
granted by those who deny the existence of 
a material world. 

As there is no material difference between 



* Locke may be said to have first naturalized *he 
viQrA in English philosophical language, in its Cane- 
sian extension.— H. 

T 2 



276 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



Locke and Des Cartes with regard to the 
perception of objects by the senses, there 
is the less occasion, in this place, to take 
notice of all their differences in other points. 
They differed about the origin of our ideas. 
Des Cartes thought some of them were 
innate ; the other maintained that there 
are no innate ideas, and that they are all 
derived from two sources — to wit, sensation 
and reflection ; meaning, by sensation, the 
operations of our exteriial senses ; and, by 
reflection, that attention which we are 
capable of giving to the operations of our 
own minds. [146] 

They differed with regard to the essence 
both of matter and of mind : the British 
philosopher holding that the real essence of 
both is beyond the reach of human know- 
ledge ; the other conceiving that the very 
essence of mind consists in thought, and 
that of matter in extension, by which he 
made matter and space not to differin reality, 
and no part of space to be void of matter. 

Mr Locke explained, more distinctly than 
had been done before, the operations of the 
mind in classing the various objects of 
thought, and reducing them to genera and 
species. He was the first, I think, who 
distinguished in substances what he calls 
the nominal essence — which is only the 
notion we form of a genus or species, and 
which we express by a definition — from the 
real essence or internal constitution of the 
thing, which makes it to be what it is.* 
Without this distinction, the subtile dis- 
putes which tortured the schoolmen for so 
many ages, in the controversy between the 
nominalists and realists, could never be 
brought to an issue. He shews distinctly 
how we form abstract and general notions, 
and the use and necessity of them in rea- 
soning. And as (according to the received 
principles of philosophers) every notion of 
our mind must have for its object an idea 
in the mind itself, -|- he thinks that we form 
abstract ideas by leaving out of the idea of 
an individual everything wherein it differs 
from other individuals of the same species 
or genus ; and that this power of forming 
abstract ideas, is that which chiefly dis- 
tinguishes us from brute animals, in whom 
he could see no evidence of any abstract 
ideas. 

Since the time of Des Cartes, philoso- 
phers have differed much with regard to the 
share they ascribe to the mind itself, in the 
fabrication of those representative beings 
called ideas, and the manner in which this 
work is carried on. 



* Locke has no originality in this respect. — H. 

■} Notion is here used for the apprehension of the 
idea, or representative reality, which Reid supposed 
that all philosophers viewed as something more than 
the mere act of knowledge, considered in relation to 
what was, through it, known or represented.— H. 



Of the authors I have met with, Dr 
Robert Hook is the most explicit. He was 
one of the most ingenious and active mem- 
bers of the Royal Society of London at its 
first institution ; and frequently read lec- 
tures to the Society, which were published 
among his posthumous works. [ 147] In his 
" Lectures upon Light," § 7, he makes 
ideas to be material substances ; and thinks 
that the brain is furnished with a proper 
kind of matter for fabricating the ideas of 
each sense. The ideas of sight, he thinks, 
are formed of a kind of matter resembling 
the Bononian stone, or some kind of phos- 
phorus ; that the ideas of sound are formed 
of some matter resembling the chords or 
glasses which take a sound from the vibra- 
tions of the air ; and so of the rest. 

The soul, he thinks, may fabricate some 
hundreds of those ideas in a day ; and that, 
as they are formed, they are pushed farther 
off from the centre of the brain where the 
soul resides. By this means they make a con- 
tinued chain of ideas, coyled up in the brain ; 
the first end of which is farthest removed 
from the centre or seat of the soul, and the 
other end is always at the centre, being the 
last idea formed, which is always present 
the moment when considered ; and, there- 
fore, according as there is a greater number 
of ideas between the present sensation or 
thought in the centre and any other, the 
soul is apprehensive of a larger portion of 
time interposed. 

Mr Locke has not entered into so minute 
a detail of this manufacture of ideas ; but he 
ascribes to the mind a very considerable 
hand in forming its own ideas. With re- 
gard to our sensations, the mind is passive, 
" they being produced in us, only by dif- 
ferent degrees and modes of motion in our 
animal spirits, variously agitated by ex- 
ternal objects." These, however, cease to 
be as soon as they cease to be perceived ; 
but, by the faculties of memory and imagin- 
ation, " the mind has an ability, when it 
wills, to revive them again, and, as it were, 
to paint them anew upon itself, though 
some with more, some with less difficulty.'* 

As to the ideas of reflection, he ascribes 
them to no other cause but to that attention 
which the mind is capable of giving to its 
own operations. These, therefore, are 
formed by the mind itself. [148] Heascribes 
likewise to the mind the power of com- 
pounding its simple ideas into complex ones 
of various forms; of repeating them, and 
adding the repetitions together ; of dividing 
and classing them ; of comparing them, 
and, from that comparison, of forming the 
ideas of their relation ; nay, of forming a 
general idea of a species or genus, by taking 
from the idea of an individual everything 
by which it is distinguished from other in- 
dividuals of the kind, till at last it becomes 
[146-148] 



chap. ix.J OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MR LOCKE. 



277 



a i abstract general idea, common to all the 
iu iividuals of the kind. 

These, I think, are the powers which Mr 
Locke ascribes to the mind itself in the 
fabrication of its ideas. Bishop Berkeley, 
as we shall see afterwards, abridged them 
considerably, and Mr Hume much more. 

The ideas we have of the various quali- 
ties of bodies are not all, as Mr Locke 
thinks, of the same kind. Some of them 
are images or resemblances of what is really 
iu the body ; others are not. There are 
certain qualities inseparable from matter ; 
such as extension, solidity, figure, mobility. 
O ur ideas of these are real resemblances of 
the qualities in the body ; and these he 
calls primary qualities- But colour, sound, 
taste, smell, heat, and cold, he calls second- 
ary qualities, and thinks that they are 
only powers in bodies of producing cer- 
tain sensations in us ; which sensations 
have nothing resembling them, though they 
are commonly thought to be exact resem- 
blances of something in the body. " Thus," 
says he, " the idea of heat or light, which 
we receive, by our eye or touch, from the 
sun, are commonly thought real qualities 
existing in the sun, and something more 
than mere powers in it." 

The names of primary and secondary 
qualities were, I believe, first used by Mr 
Locke ; but the distinction which they ex- 
press, was well understood by Des Cartes, 
and is explained by him in his " Principia," 
Part I., § C9, 70, 7L [149] 

Although no author has more merit than 
Mr Locke, in pointing out the ambiguity of 
words, and resolving, by that means, many 
knotty questions, which had tortured the 
wits of the schoolmen, yet, I apprehend, 
he has been sonetimes misled by the ambi- 
guity of the word idea, which he uses so 
often almost in every page of his essay. 

In the explication given of this word, we 
took notice of two meanings given to it — a 
popular and a philosophical. In the popu- 
lar meaning, to have an idea of anything, 
signifies nothing more than to think of it. 

Although the operations of the mind are 
most properly and naturally, and indeed 
most commonly in all vulgar languages, ex- 
pressed by active verbs, there is another 
way of expressing them, less common, but 
equally well understood. To think of a 
thing, and to have a thought of it ; to be- 
lieve a thing, and to have a belief of it ; to 
see a thing, and have a sight of it ; to con- 
ceive a thing, and to have a conception, 
notion, or idea of it — are phrases perfectly 
synonymous. In these phrases, the thought 
means nothing but the act of thinking ; the 
belief, the act of believing ; and the con- 
ception, notion, or idea, the act of conceiv- 
ing. To have a clear and distinct idea is, 
in this sense, nothing else but to conceive 
r 14-9, 150] 



the thing clearly and distinctly. When the 
word idea is taken in this popular sense, 
there can be no doubt of our having ideas in 
our minds. To think without ideas would 
be to think without thought, which is a 
manifest contradiction.* 

But there is another meaning of the word 
idea peculiar to philosophers, and grounded 
upon a philosophical theory, which the vul- 
gar never think of. Philosophers, ancient 
and modern, have maintained that the 
operations of the mind, like the tools of an 
artificer, can only be employed upon objects 
that are present in the mind, or in the 
brain, where the mind is supposed to reside. 
[150] Therefore, objects that are distant in 
time or place must have a representative hi 
the mind, or in the brain — some image or 
picture of them, which is the object that the 
mind contemplates. This representative 
image was, in the old philosophy, called a 
species or phantasm. Since the time of 
Des Cartes, it has more commonly been 
called an idea ; and every thought is con- 
ceived to have an idea of its object. As 
this has been a common opinion among 
philosophers, as far back as we can trace phi- 
losophy, it is the less to be wondered at that 
they should be apt to confound the opera- 
tion of the mind in thinldng with the idea 
or object of thought, which is supposed to 
be its inseparable concomitant.* 

If we pay any regard to the common 
sense of mankind, thought and the object 
of thought are different things, and ought 
to be distinguished. It is true, thought 
cannot be without an object — for every 
man who thinks must think of something ; 
but the object he thinks of is one thing, his 
thought of that object is another thing. 
They are distinguished in all languages, even 
by the vulgar ; and many things may be 
affirmed of thought — that is, of the opera- 
tion of the mind in thinking — which cannot, 
without error, and even absurdity, be af- 
firmed of the object of that operation.* 

From this, I think, it is evident that, if 
the word idea, in a work where it occurs in 
every paragraph, is used without any inti- 
mation of the ambiguity of the word, some- 
times to signify thought, or the operation 
of the mind in thinking, sometimes to sig- 
nify those internal objects of thought which 
philosophers suppose, this must occasion 
confusion in the thoughts both of the au- 
thor and of the readers. I take this to be 
the greatest blemish in the " Essay on Hu- 
man Understanding." I apprehend this is 
the true source of several paradoxical opin- 
ions in that excellent work, which I shall 
have occasion to take notice of. 

Here it is very natural to a?k, Whether 
it was Mr Locke's opinion, that ideas are 

» See Note C— H. 



278 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



the only objects of thought ? or, Whether 
it is not possible for men to think of things 
which are not ideas in the mind ?* [151] 

To this question it is not easy to give a 
direct answer. On the one hand, he says 
often, in distinct and studied expressions, 
that the term idea stands for whatever is 
the object of the understanding when a man 
thinks, or whatever it is which the mind 
can be employed about in thinking : that 
the mind perceives nothing but its own 
ideas : that all knowledge consists in the 
perception of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of our ideas : that we can have no 
knowledge farther than we have ideas. 
These, and many other expressions of the 
like import, evidently imply that every 
object of thought must be an idea, and can 
be nothing else. 

On the other hand, I am persuaded that 
Mr Locke would have acknowledged that 
we may think of Alexander the Great, or 
of the planet Jupiter, and of numberless 
things which he would have owned are not 
ideas in the mind, but objects which exist 
independent of the mind that thinks of 
them.-f- 

How shall we reconcile the two parts of 
this apparent contradiction ? All I am able 
to say, upon Mr Locke's principles, to recon- 
cile them, is this, That we cannot think of 
Alexander, or of the planet Jupiter, unless 
we have in our minds an idea — that is, an 
image or picture of those objects. The 
idea of Alexander is an image, or picture, 
or representation of that hero in my mind ; 



* It is to be remembered that Keid means, by 
Ideas, representative entities different from the cog. 
nitive modifications of the mind itself — H. 

t On the confusion of this and the four subsequent 
paragraphs, see Note C.— Whatever is the immediate 
object of thought, of that we are necessarily conscious. 
But of Alexander, for example, as existing, we are 
necessatily not conscious. Alexander, as existing, 
cannot, therefore, possibly be an immediate object of 
thought; consequently, if we can be said to think of 
Alexander at all, we can only be said to think of him 
mediately, in and through a representation of which 
we are conscious ; and that representation is the im. 
mediate object of thought. It makes no difference 
whether this immediate object be viewed as a tertium 
quid, distinct from the existing reality and from the 
conscious mind; or whether as a mere modality of 
the conscious mind itself— as tne mere act of thought 
considered in its relation to something beyond the 
sphere of consciousness. In neither case, can we be 
6aid (be it in the imagination of a possible or the 
recollection of a past existence) to know a thing as 
existing— that is, immediately ; and, therefore, if in 
these operations we be said to know aught out the 
mind at all, we can only be said to know it me- 
diately—in other words, as a mediate object. The 
whole perplexity arises from the ambiguity of the 
term object, that term being used both for the exter- 
nal reality of which we are here not conscious, and 
cannot therefore know in itself, and for the mental 
representation which we know in itself, but which is 
known only as relative to the other. Reid chooses to 
abolish the former signification, on the supposition 
that it only applies to a representative entity differ- 
ent from the act of thought. In this supposition, 
however, he is wrong ; nor does he obtain an imme- 
diate knowledge, even in perception, by merely deny- 
thecrudc hypothesis of representation —H. 



and this idea is the immediate object of my 
thought when I think of Alexander. That 
this was Locke's opinion, and that it has 
been generally the opinion of philosophers, 
there can be no doubt. 

But, instead of giving light to the ques- 
tion proposed, it seems to involve it in 
greater darkness. 

When I think of Alexander, I am told 
there is an image or idea of Alexander in 
my mind, which is the immediate object of 
this thought. The necessary consequence 
of this seems to be, that there are two ob- 
jects of this thought — the idea, which is in 
the mind, and the person represented by that 
idea ; the first, the immediate object of the 
thought, the last, the object of the same 
thought, but not the immediate object. 
[152] This is a hard saying; for it makes 
every thought of things external to have a 
double object. Every man is conscious of 
his thoughts, and yet, upon attentive reflec- 
tion, he perceives no such duplicity in the 
object he thinks about. Sometimes men 
see objects double, but they always know 
when they do so : and I know of no philo- 
sopher who has expressly owned this dupli- 
city in the object of thought, though it fol- 
lows necessarily from maintaining that, in 
the same thought, there is one object that 
is immediate and in the mind itself, and 
another object which is not immediate, and 
which is not in the mind.* 

Besides this, it seems very hard, or rather 
impossible, to understand what is meant by 
an object of thought that is not an imme- 
diate object of thought. A body in motion 
may move another that was at rest, by the 
medium of a third body that is interposed. 
This is easily understood ; but we are unable 
to conceive any medium interposed between 
a mind and the thought of that mind ; and, 
to think of any object by a medium, seems 
to be words without any meaning. There 
is a sense in which a thing may be said to 
be perceived by a medium. Thus any kind 
of sign may be said to be the medium by 
which I perceive or understand the thing 
signified. The sign by custom, or compact, 
or perhaps by nature, introduces the thought 
of the thing signified. But here the thing 
signified, when it is introduced to the 
thought, is an object of thought no less 
immediate than the sign was before. And 
there are here two objects of thought, one 
succeeding another, which we have shewn 
is not the case with respect to an idea, and 
the object it represents. 

» That is, if by object was meant the same thing, 
when the term is applied to the external reality, 
and to its mental representation. Even under the 
Scholastic theory of repeesentation, it was generally 
maintained that thespecies itself is not an object of 
perception, but the external reality through it ; a 
mode of speaking justly reprehended by the acuter 
schoolmen. But in this respect Reid is equally to 
blame. See Note C— H. 

("151 1*2] 



chap, ix.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MR LOCKE. 



279 



I apprehend, therefore, that, if philoso- 
phers will maintain that ideas in tlie mind 
are the only immediate objects of thought, 
they will be forced to grant that they are the 
sole objects of thought, and that it is im- 
possible for men to think of anything else. 
[ 1 53] Yet, surely, Mr Locke believed that 
we can think of many things that are not 
ideas in the mind ; but he seems not to have 
perceived, that the maintaining that ideas 
in the mind are the only immediate objects 
of thought, must necessarily draw this con- 
sequence along with it. 

The consequence, however, was seen by 
Bishop Berkeley and Mr Hume, who rather 
chose to admit the consequence than to give 
up the principle from which it follows. 

Perhaps it was unfortunate for Mr Locke 
that he used the word idea so very fre- 
quently as to make it very difficult to give 
the attention necessary to put it always to 
the same meaning. And it appears evident 
that, in many places, he means nothing 
more by it but the notion or conception we 
have of any object of thought ; that is, the 
act of the mind in conceiving it, and not the 
object conceived.* 

In explaining this word, he says that he 
uses it for whatever is meant by phantasm, 
notion, species. Here are three synonymes 
to the word idea. The first and last are 
very proper to express the philosophical 
meaning of the word, being terms of art in 
the Peripatetic philosophy, and signifying 
images of external things in the mind, 
which, according to that philosophy, are 
objects of thought. But the word notion is 
a word in common language, whose meaning 
agrees exactly with the popular meaning of 



* When we contemplate a triangle, we may consider 
it either as a complement of three sides or of three 
angles ; not that the three sides and the three angles 
are possible except through each other, but because 
we may in thought view the figure— qua triangle, 
in reality one and indivisible— in different relations. 
In like manner, we may consider a representative act 
of knowledge in two relations— 1°, as an actrepresen- 
tative of something, and, 2° as an act cognitive of 
that representation, although, in truth, these are both 
only one indivisible energy— the representation only 
existing as known, the cognition being only possible in 
a representation. Thus, e. g., in the imagination of 
a Centaur — the Centaur represented is the Centaur 
known, the Centaur known is the Centaur repre- 
een'ed. It is one act under two relations— a relation 
to the subject knowing — a relation to the object re- 
presented. But to a cognitive act considered in these 
several relations we may give either different names, 
or we may confound ttlem under one, or we may do 
both ; and this is actually done ; some words express- 
ing only one relation, others both or either, and 
others properly the one but abusively also the other, 
'thus Idea properly denotes an act of thought con- 
sidered in relation to an external something beyond 
the sphere of consciousness— a representation; but 
some philosophers, as Locke, abuse it to comprehend 
the thought also, viewed as cognitive of this represen- 
tation. Again, perception, notion, conception, &c. 
{concept is, unfortunately, obsolete) comprehend 
both, or may be used to denote either of the rela- 
tions; and it is only by the context that we can ever 
vaguely discover in which application they are in- 
tended. This is unfoitunate; but so it is.— H. 



[153-155] 



the word idea, but not with the philosophi- 
cal. 

When these two different meanings o/ 
the word idea are confounded in a studied 
explication of it, there is little reason to 
expect that they should be carefully dis- 
tinguished in the frequent use of it. There 
are many passages in the Essay in which, 
to make them intelligible, the word idea 
must be taken in one of those senses, and 
many others in which it must be taken in 
the other. It seems probable that the 
author, not attending to this ambiguity of 
the word, used it in the one sense or the 
other, as the subject-matter required ; and 
the far greater part of his readers have done 
the same. [154] 

There is a third sense, in which he uses 
the word not unfrequently, to signify objects 
of thought that are not in tlie mind, but 
external. Of this he seems to be sensible, 
and somewhere makes an apology for it. 
When he affirms, as he does in innumerable 
places, that all human knowledge consists 
in the perception of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of our ideas, it is impossible to 
put a meaning upon this, consistent with 
his principles, unless he means by ideae 
every object of human thought, whether 
mediate or immediate ; everything, in a 
word, that can be signified by the subject, 
or predicate of a proposition. 

Thus, we see that the word idea has three 
different meanings in the essay; and the 
author seems to have used it sometimes in one, 
sometimes in another, without being aware 
of any change in the meaning. The reader 
slides easily into the same fallacy, that 
meaning occurring most readily to his mind 
which gives the best sense to what he reads. 
I have met with persons professing no slight 
acquaintance with the " Essay on Human 
Understanding,'' who maintained that the 
word idea, wherever, it occurs, means 
nothing more than thought ; and that, 
where he speaks of ideas as images in the 
mind, and as objects of thought, he is not 
to be understood as speaking properly, but 
figuratively or analogically. And, indeed, 
I apprehend that it would be no small 
advantage to many passages in the book, 
if they could admit of this interpretation. 

It is not the fault of this philosopher 
alone to have given too little attention to 
the distinction between the operations of 
the mind and the objects of those opera- 
tions. Although this distinction be familiar 
to the vulgar, and found in the structure of 
all languages, philosophers, when they speak 
of ideas, often confound [155] the two to- 
gether ; and their theory concerning ideas 
has led them to do so ; for ideas, being 
supposed to be a shadowy kind of beings, 
intermediate between the thought and the 
object of thought, sometimes seem to coa> 



280 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II 



lesce with the thought, sometimes with the 
object of thought, and sometimes to have a 
distinct existence of their own. 

The same philosophical theory of ideas 
has led philosophers to confound the differ- 
ent operations of the understanding, and 
to call them all by the name of perception.* 
Mr Locke, though not free from this fault, 
is not so often chargeable with it as some 
who came after him. The vulgar give the 
name of perception to that immediate know- 
ledge of external objects which we have by 
our external senses. + This is its proper 
meaning in our language, though sometimes 
it may be applied to other things metaphori- 
cally or analogically. J When I think of 
anything that does not exist, as of the 
republic of Oceana, I do not perceive it — I 
only conceive or imagine it.§ When I 
think of what happened to me yesterday, I 
do not perceive but remember it. || When 
I am pained with the gout, it is not proper 
to say I perceive the pain ; I feel it, or am 
conscious of it : it is not an object of per- 
ception, but of sensation and of conscious- 
ness.^" So far, the vulgar distinguish very 
properly the different operations of the 
mind, and never confound the names of 
things so different in their nature. But 
the theory of ideas leads philosophers to 
conceive all those operations to be of one 
nature, and to give them one name. They 
are all, according to that theory, the per- 
ception of ideas in the mind. Perceiving, 
remembering, imagining, being conscious, 
are all perceiving ideas in the mind, and 
are called perceptions. Hence it is that 
philosophers speak of the perceptions of 
memory, and the perceptions of imagina- 



• No mere than by calling them all by the name 
of Cognitioi s, or Acts of Consciouness. There was 
no reason, either from etymology or usage, why per- 
ception should not signify the energy of immediately 
apprehending, in general; and until Reid limited the 
word to our apprehension of an external world, it 
was, in fact, employed by philosophers, as tanta- 
mount to an act of consciousness. We were in need 
of a word to express our sensitive cognitions as dis- 
tinct from our sensitive feelings, (for the term sens- 
ation involved both,) and, therefore, Reid's restric- 
tion, though contrary to all precedent, may be ad- 
mitted ; but his criticism of i.ther philosophers for 
their employment of the term, in a wider meaning, 
is wholly groundless. — H. 

t But not exclusively.— -H. 

% This is not correct — H. 

\ And why ? Simply because we do not, by such 
an act, know, or apprehend such an object to exist ; 
we merely represent it. But perception was only 
used for such an apprehension. We could say, how- 
ever, that we peiceived (as we could say that we were 
conscious of) the republic of Cceana, as imagined 
by us, after Harrington. — H. 

i| And (his, for the same reason. What is remem- 
bered is not and can not be immediately known ; 
nought but the present mental representation is so 
known ; and this we could properly say that we 
perceived. — H. 

If Because the feeling of pain, though only possible 
through consciousness, is not an act of knowledge. 
But it could be properly said, / perceive a feeling of 
pain. At any rate, theexpression 1 perceive a pain, 
is *s correct as J am conscious of a jain.— H. 



tion. They make sensation to be a percep- 
tion ; and everything we perceive by our 
senses to be an idea of sensation. Some- 
times they say that they are conscious of 
the ideas in their own minds, sometimes 
that they perceive them.* [156] 

However improbable it may appear that 
philosophers who have taken pains to study 
the operations of their own minds, should 
express them less properly and less dis- 
tinctly than the vulgar, it seems really to be 
the case ; and the only account that can be 
given of this strange phenomenon, I take 
to be this : that the vulgar seek no theory 
to account for the operations of their minds ; 
they know that they see, and hear, and re- 
member, and imagine ; and those who think 
distinctly will express these operations dis- 
tinctly, as their consciousness represents 
them to the mind ; but philosophers think 
they ought to know not only that there are 
such operations, but how they are per- 
formed ; how they see, and hear, and re- 
member, and imagine ; and, having invented 
a theory to explain these operations, by 
ideas or images in the mind, they suit their 
expressions to their theory ; and, as a false 
comment throws a cloud upon the text, so 
a false theory darkens the phenomena 
which it attempts to explain. 

We shall examine this theory afterwards. 
Here I would only observe that, if it is not 
true, it may be expected that it should lead 
ingenious men who adopt it to confound the 
operations of the mind with their objects, 
and with one another, even where the com- 
mon language of the unlearned clearly dis- 
tinguishes them. One that trusts to a false 
guide is in greater danger of being led 
astray, than he who trusts his own eyes, 
though he should be but indifferently ac- 
quainted with the road. 



CHAPTER X. 

OF THE SENTIMENTS OF BISHOP EERKELEY. 

George Berkeley, afterwards Bishop 
of Cloyne, published his " New Theory of 
Vision," in 1709; his "Treatise concern- 
ing the Principles of Human Knowledge," in 
1710 ; and his "Dialogues between Hylas 
and Philonous," in 1713 ; being then a Fel- 
low of Trinity College, Dublin. [157] He is 
acknowledged universally to have great 
merit, as an excellent writer, and a very 
acute and clear reasoner on the most ab- 
stract subjects, not to speak of his virtues 
as a man, which were very conspicuous : 
yet the doctrine chiefly held forth in the 
treatises above mentioned, especially in the 

* The connection of the wider signification of the 
term perception, with the more complex theory of 
representation, has no foundation — H. 

ri56, 157"! 



chap, x.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF BISHOP BERKELEY. 



281 



two last, has generally been thought so very 
absurd, that few can be brought to think 
that he either believed it himself, or that 
he seriously meant to persuade others of its 
truth. 

He maintains, and thinks he has demon- 
strated, by a variety of arguments, ground- 
ed on principles of philosophy universally 
received, that there is no such thing as 
matter in the universe ; that sun and moon, 
earth and sea, our own bodies, and those of 
our friends, are nothing but ideas in the 
minds of those who think of them, and that 
they have no existence when they are not 
the objects of thought ; that all that is in 
the universe may be reduced to two cate- 
gories — to wit, minds, and ideas in the 
mind. 

But, however absurd this doctrine might 
appear to the unlearned, who consider the 
existence of the objects of sense as the 
most evident of all truths, and what no man 
in his senses can doubt, the philosophers 
who had been accustomed to consider ideas 
as the immediate objects of all thought, had 
no title to view this doctrine of Berkeley in 
so unfavourable a light. 

They were taught by Des Cartes, and by 
all that came after him, that the existence 
of the objects of sense is not self-evident, 
but requires to be proved by arguments ; 
and, although Des Cartes, and many others, 
had laboured to find arguments for this 
purpose, there did not appear to be that 
force and clearness in them which might 
have been expected in a matter of such im- 
portance. Mr Norris had declared that, 
after all the arguments that had been 
offered, the existence of an external world 
is only probable, but by no means certain. 
[158] Malebranche thought it rested upon the 
authority of revelation, and that the argu- 
ments drawn from reason were not perfectly 
conclusive. Others thought that the argu- 
ment from revelation was a mere sophism, 
because revelation comes to us by our 
senses, and must rest upon their authority. 

Thus we see that the new philosophy 
had been making gradual approaches towards 
Berkeley's opinion ; and; whatever others 
might do, the philosophers had no title to 
look upon it as absurd, or unworthy of a 
fair examination. Several authors attempt- 
ed to answer his arguments, but with little 
success, and others acknowledged that they 
could neither answer them nor assent to 
them. It is probable the Bishop made but 
few converts to his doctrine ; but it is cer- 
tain he made some ; and that he himself 
continued, to the end of his life, firmly per- 
suaded, not only of its truth,* but of its 



• Berkeley's confidence in his idealism was, how. 
ever, nothing to Fichte's. This philosopher, in one 
of his controversial treatises, imprecates everlasting 
damnation on himself not only should he retract, but 
fl58. 159"! 



great importance for the improvement of 
human knowledge, and especially for the 
defence of religion. Dial. Pref. " If the 
principles which I here endeavour to pro- 
pagate, are admitted for true, the conse- 
quences which I think evidently flow from 
thence are, that atheism and scepticism 
will be utterly destroyed, many intricate 
points made plain, great difficulties solved, 
several useless parts of science retrenched, 
speculation referred to practice, and men 
reduced from paradoxes to common sense." 

In the " Theory of Vision," he goes no 
farther than to assert that the objects of 
sight are nothing but ideas in the mind, 
granting, or at least not denying, that there 
is a tangible world, which is really external, 
and which exists whether we perceive it or 
not. Whether thereason of this was, that his 
system had not, at that time, wholly opened 
to his own mind, or whether he thought it 
prudent to let it enter into the minds of his 
readers by degrees, I cannot say. I think 
he insinuates the last as the reason, in the 
" Principles of Human Knowledge." [ 159] 

The " Theory of Vision," however, taken 
by itself, and without relation to the main 
branch of his system, contains very important 
discoveries, and marks of great genius. He 
distinguishes more accurately than any that 
went before him, between the immediate 
objects of sight, and those of the other 
senses which are early associated with them. 
He shews that distance, of itself and imme- 
diately, is not seen ; but that we learn to 
judge of it by certain sensations and per- 
ceptions which are connected with it. This 
is a very important observation ; and, I 
believe, was first made by this author.* 
It gives much new light to the operations 
of our senses, and serves to account for 
many phsenomena in optics, of which the 
greatest adepts in that science had always 
either given a false account, or acknow- 
ledged that they could give none at all. 

We may observe, by the way, that the 
ingenious author seems not to have attended 
to a distinction by which his general asser- 
tion ought to have been limited. It is true 
that the distance of an object from the eye is 
not immediately seen ; but there is a certain 
kind of distance of one object from another 
which we see immediately. The author 
acknowledges that there is a visible exten- 
sion, and visible figures, which are proper 
objects of sight ; there must therefore be a 
visible distance. Astronomers call it an- 
gular distance ; and, although they measure 



should he even waver in regard to any one principle 
of his doctrine; a doctrine, the speculative result of 
which left him, as he confesses, without even a cer. 
tainty of his own existence. (See above, p. 129, 
note *.) It is Varro who speaks of the credula 
philosopho^um natio : but this is. to be credulous 
even in incredulity. — H. 

* This last statement is inaccurate.— H. 



182 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



it by the angle, which is made by two lines 
drawn from the eye to the two distant ob- 
jects, yet it is immediately perceived by 
sight, even by those who never thought of 
that nngle. 

He led the way in shewing how we learn 
to perceive the distance of an object from 
the eye, though this speculation was carried 
farther by others who came after him. He 
made the distinction between that extension 
and figure which we perceive by sight only, 
and that which we perceive by touch ; call- 
ing the first, visible, the last, tangible ex- 
tension and figure. He shewed, likewise, 
that tangible extension, and not visible, is 
the object of geometry, although mathema- 
ticians commonly use visible diagrams in 
their demonstrations.* [160] 

The notion of extension and figure which 
we get from sight only, and that which we 
get from touch, have been so constantly 
conjoined from our infancy in all the judg- 
ments we form of the objects of sense, 
that it required great abilities to distin- 
guish them accurately, and to assign to 
each sense what truly belongs to it ; " so 
difficult a thing it is," as Berkeley justly 
observes, " to dissolve an union so early 
begun, and confirmed by so long a habit." 
This point he has laboured, through the 
whole of the essay on vision, with that 
uncommon penetration and judgment which 
he possessed, and with as great success as 
could be expected in a first attempt upon 
so abstruse a subject. 

He concludes this essay, by shewing, in 
no less than seven sections, the notions 
which an intelligent being, endowed with 
sight, without the sense of touch, might 
form of the objects of sense. This specu- 
lation, to shallow thinkers, may appear to 
be egregious trifling. -|- To Bishop Ber- 
keley it appeared in another light, and will 
do so to those who are capable of entering 
into it, and who know the importance of it, 
in solving many of the phenomena of vision. 
He seems, indeed, to have exerted more 
force of genius in this than in the main 
branch of his system. 

In the new philosophy, the pillars by 
which the existence of a material world was 
supported, were so feeble that it did not 
re i aire the force of a Samson to brinsr them 



* Properly «pe.ik ng, it is neither tangible nor 
visible extension which is the object of geometry, 
but intelligible, pure, or a priori extension. — H. 

+ This, I have no doubt, is in allusion to Priestley. 
That writer had, not very courteously, said, in his 
«« Examination of Reid's Inquiry" «« I do not re- 
member to have seen a more egregious piece of so- 
lemn trifling than the chapter which our author calls 
the ' Geometry of Visible*,' and his account of the 
• Idomenians,' as he terms tlr se imaginary beings who 
nad no ideas of substance but from sight. "—In a note 
upon that chapter of «« The Inquiry," I stated that 
the thought of a Geometry of Visihles was original to 
Berkeley, and I had then no recollection of Reid's 
acknowledgment in the present paragraph. — H. 



down ; and in this we have not so much 
reason to admire the strength of Berkeley's 
genius, as his boldness in publishing to the 
world an opinion which the unlearned would 
be apt to interpret as the sign of a crazy 
intellect. A man who was firmly persuaded 
of the doctrine universally received by phi- 
losophers concerning ideas, if he could but 
take courage to call in question the exist- 
ence of a material world, would easily find 
unanswerable arguments in that doctrine. 
[161] " Some truths there are," says Berke- 
ley, " so near and obvious to the mind, that 
a man need only open his eyes to see them. 
Such," he adds, "I take this important one 
to be, that all the choir of heaven, and fur- 
niture of the earth— in a word, all those 
bodies which compose the mighty frame 
of the world — have not any subsistence 
without a mind." Princ. § 6. 

The principle from which this important 
conclusion is obviously deduced, is laid down 
in the first sentence of his principles of 
knowledge, as evident ; and, indeed, it has 
always been acknowledged by philosophers. 
" It is evident," says he, " to any one who 
takes a survey of the objects of human 
knowledge, that they are either ideas ac- 
tually imprinted on the senses, or else such 
as are perceived, by attending to the pas- 
sions and operations of the mind ; or, lastly, 
ideas formed by help of memory and imagin- 
ation, either compounding, dividing, or 
barely representing those originally per- 
ceived in the foresaid ways." 

This is the foundation on which the whole 
system rests. If this be true, then, indeed, 
the existence of a material world must be 
a dream that has imposed upon all mankind 
from the beginning of the world. 

The foundation on which such a fabric 
rests ought to be very solid and well esta- 
blished ; yet Berkeley says nothing more for 
it than that it is evident. If he means that 
it is self-evident, this indeed might be a 
good reason for not offering any direct argu- 
ment in proof of it. But I apprehend this 
cannot justly be said. Self-evident propo- 
sitions are those which appear evident to 
every man of sound understanding who ap- 
prehends the meaning of them distinctly, 
and attends to them without prejudice. Can 
this be said of this proposition, That all the 
objects of our knowledge are ideas in our 
own minds ?* I believe that, to anv man 



* To the Idealist, it is of perfect indifference whether 
this proposition, in Reid's sense of the expression 
Ideas, be admitted, or whether it be held that we are 
conscious of nothing but of the modifications of our 
own minds. For, on the supposition that we can 
know the non-ego only in and through the ego, it 
follows, (since we can know nothing immediately of 
which we are not conscious, and it being allowed 
that we are conscious only of mind,) that it is con. 
tradicfory to suppose aught, as known, {i.e., any ob- 
ject of knowledge.) to be known otherwise than as it 
phenomenon ct mind.— H. 

[160/ 16T] 



:hap. x.J OF THE SENTIMENTS OF BISHOP BERKELEY 



283 



uninstracted in philosophy, this proposition 
will appear very improbable, if not absurd. 
[162] However scanty his knowledge may 
be, he considers the sun and moon, the earth 
and sea, as objects of it; and it will be difficult 
to persuade him that those objects of his 
knowledge are ideas in his own mind, and 
have no existence when he does not think 
of them. If I may presume to speak my 
own sentiments, I once believed this doc- 
trine of ideas so firmly as to embrace the 
whole of Berkeley's system in consequence 
of it ; till, finding other consequences to 
follow from it, which gave me more unea- 
siness than the want of a material world, 
it came into my mind, more than forty 
years ago, to put the question, What evi- 
dence have I for this doctrine, that all the 
objects of my knowledge are ideas in my 
own mind ? From that time to the pre- 
sent I have been candidly and impartially, 
as I think, seeking for the evidence of this 
principle, but can find none, excepting the 
authority of philosophers. 

We shall have occasion to examine its 
evidence afterwards. I would at present 
only observe, that all the arguments brought 
by Berkeley against the existence of a ma- 
terial world are grounded upon it ; and that 
he has not attempted to give any evidence 
for it, but takes it for granted, as other 
philosophers had done before him. 

But, supposing this principle to be true, 
Berkeley's system is impregnable. No 
demonstration can be more evident than 
his reasoning from it. Whatever is per- 
ceived is an idea, and an idea can only 
exist in a mind. It has no existence when 
it is not perceived ; nor can there be any- 
thing like an idea, but an idea. 

So sensible he was that it required no 
laborious reasoning to deduce his system 
from the principle laid down, that he was 
afraid of being thought needlessly prolix in 
handling the subject, and makes an apology 
for it. Princ. § 22. " To what purpose 
is it," says he, " to dilate upon that which 
may be demonstrated, with the utmost evi- 
dence, in a line or two, to any one who is 
capable of the least reflection?" [163] But, 
though his demonstration might have been 
comprehended in a line or two, he very pru- 
dently thought that an opinion which the 
world would be apt to look upon as a mon- 
ster of absurdity, would not be able to make 
its way at once, even by the force of a naked 
demonstration. He observes, justly, Dial. 
2, " That, though a demonstration be never 
so well grounded and fairly proposed, yet 
if there is, withal, a strain of prejudice, or 
a wrong bias on the understanding, can it 
be expected to perceive clearly, and adhere 
firmly to the truth ? No ; there is need of 
time and pains ; the attention must be 
awakened and detained, by a frequent re- 



petition of the same thing, placed often in 
the same, often in different lights." 

It was, therefore, necessary to dwell 
upon it, and turn it on all sides, till it became 
familiar ; to consider all its consequences, 
and to obviate every prejudice and pre- 
possession that might hinder its admittance. 
It was even a matter of some difficulty to 
fit it to common language, so far as to 
enable men to speak and reason about it 
intelligibly. Those who have entered se- 
riously into Berkeley's system, have found, 
after all the assistance which his writings 
give, that time and practice are necessary 
to acquire the habit of speaking and think- 
ing distinctly upon it. 

Berkeley foresaw the opposition that 
would be made to his system, from two 
different quarters : first, from the philos- 
ophers ; and, secondly, from the vulgar, 
who are led by the plain dictates of nature. 
The first he had the courage to oppose 
openly and avowedly ; the second, he 
dreaded much more, and, therefore, takes 
a great deal of pains, and, I think, uses 
some art, to court into his party. This 
is particularly observable in his " Dia- 
logues." He sets out with a declaration, 
Dial. 1, " That, of late, he had quitted 
several of the sublime notions he had got 
in the schools of the philosophers, for vul- 
gar opinions," and assures Hylas, his fel- 
low-dialogist, " That, since this revolt from 
metaphysical notions to the plain dictates 
of nature and common sense, he found his 
understanding strangely enlightened ; so 
that he could now easily comprehend a great 
many things, which before were all mys- 
tery and riddle." [164] Pref. to Dial. " If 
his principles are admitted for true, men 
will be reduced from paradoxes to common 
sense." At the same time, he acknowledges, 
" That they carry with them a great opposi- 
tion to the prejudices of philosophers, which 
have so far prevailed against the common 
sense and natural notions of mankind." 

When Hylas objects to him, Dial. 3, 
" You can never persuade me, Philonous, 
that the denying of matter or corporeal 
substance is not repugnant to the universal 
sense of mankind" — he answers, " I wish 
both our opinions were fairly stated, and 
submitted to the judgment of men who had 
plain common sense, without the prejudices 
of a learned education. Let me be repre- 
sented as one who trusts his senses, who 
thinks he knows the things he sees and 
feels, and entertains no doubt of their ex- 
istence — If by material substance is meant 
only sensible body, that which is seen and 
felt, (and the unphilosophical part of the 
world, I dare say, mean no more,) then I 
am more certain of matter's existence than 
you or any other philosopher pretend to be. 
If there be anything which makes the 



284 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



generality of mankind averse from the 
notions I espouse, it is a misapprehension 
that I deny the reality of sensible things : 
but, as it is you who are guilty of that, and 
not I, it follows, that, in truth, their aversion 
is against your notions, and not mine. I 
am content to appeal to the common sense 
of the world for the truth of my notion. I 
am of a vulgar east, simple enough to 
believe my senses, and to leave things as I 
find them. I cannot, for my life, help 
thinking that snow is white and fire hot." 

When Hylas is at last entirely converted, 
he observes to Philonous, " After all, the 
controversy about matter, in the strict 
acceptation of it, lies altogether between 
you and the philosophers, whose principles, 
I acknowledge, are not near so natural, or 
so agreeable to the common sense of man- 
kind, and Holy Scripture, as yours." [165] 
Philonous observes, in the end, " That he 
does not pretend to be a setter up of new 
notions ; his endeavours tend only to unite, 
and to place in a clearer light, that truth 
which was before shared between the vul- 
gar and the philosophers ; the former being 
of opinion, that those things they im- 
mediately perceive are the real things ; and 
the latter, that the things immediately 
perceived, are ideas which exist only in the 
mind ; which two things put together do, 
in effect, constitute the substance of what 
lie advances." And he concludes by ob- 
serving, "That those principles which at 
first view lead to scepticism, pursued to a 
certain point, bring men back to common 
sense." 

These passages shew sufficiently the 
author's concern to reconcile his system to 
the plain dictates of nature and common 
sense, while he expresses no concern to 
reconcile it to the received doctrines of 
philosophers. He is fond to take part with 
the vulgar against the philosophers, and to 
vindicate common sense against their inno- 
vations. What pity is it that he did not 
carry this suspicion of the doctrine of philo- 
sophers so far as to doubt of that philoso- 
phical tenet on which his whole system is 
built — to wit, that the things immediately 
perceived by the senses are ideas which 
exist only in the mind ! 

After all, it seems no easy matter to make 
the vulgar opinion and that of Berkeley to 
meet. And, to accomplish this, he seems 
to me to draw each out of its line towards 
the other, not without some straining. 

The vulgar opinion he reduces to this, 
that the very things which we perceive by 
our senses do really exist. This he grants ;* 
for these things, says he, are ideas in our 
minds, or complexions of ideas, to which 

* This is one of the passages that may be brought 
prove that Reid did allow to the ego an imnv.'diate 
aid real knowledge of the non-ego. — H. 



we give one name, and consider as one 
thing ; these are the immediate objects of 
sense, and these do really exist. As to the 
notion that those things have an absolute 
external existence, independent of being 
perceived by any mind, he thinks [166] that 
this is no notion of the vulgar, but a refine- 
ment of philosophers ; and that the notion of 
material substance, as & substratum, or sup- 
port of that collection of sensible qualities 
to which we give the name of an apple or a 
melon, is likewise an invention of philoso- 
phers, and is not found with the vulgar till 
they are instructed by philosophers. The 
substance not being an object of sense, the 
vulgar never think of it ; or, if they are 
taught the use of the word, they mean no 
more by it but that collection of sensible 
qualities which they, from finding them con- 
joined in nature, have been accustomed to 
call by cue name, and to consider as one 
thing. 

Thus he draws the vulgar opinion near 
to his own ; and, that he may meet it half 
way, he acknowledges that material things 
have a real existence out of the mind of 
this or that person ; but the question, says 
he, between the materialist and me, is, 
Whether they have an absolute existence 
distinct from their being perceived by God, 
and exterior to all minds ? This, indeed, 
lie says, some heathens and philosophers 
have affirmed ; but whoever entertains no- 
tions of the Deity, suitable to the Holy 
Scripture, will be of another opinion. 

But here an objection occurs, which it 
required all his ingenuity to answer. It is 
this : The ideas in my mind cannot be the 
same with the ideas of any other mind ; 
therefore, if the objects I perceive be only 
ideas, it is impossible that the objects I per- 
ceive can exist anywhere, when I do not 
perceive them ; and it is impossible that 
two or more minds can perceive the same 
object. 

To this Berkeley answers, that this ob- 
jection presses no less the opinion of the 
materialist philosopher than his. But the 
difficulty is to make his opinion coincide 
with the notions of the vulgar, who are 
firmly persuaded that the very identical 
objects which they perceive, continue to 
exist when they do not perceive them ; and 
who are no less firmly persuaded that, when 
ten men look at the sun or the moon, they 
all see the same individual object.* [167] 

To reconcile this repugnancy, he observes, 
Dial. 3 — " That, if the term same be taken 
in the vulgar acceptation, it is certain (and 
not at all repugnant to the principles he 
maintains) that different persons may per- 
ceive the same thing ; or the same thing or 
idea exist in different minds. Words are 



• See the last note.— H. 



[165-167] 



chap, x.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF BISHOP BERKELEY. 



285 



of arbitrary imposition ; and, since men are 
used to apply the word same, where no dis- 
tinction or variety is perceived, and he does 
not pretend to alter their perceptions, it 
follows that, as men have said before, 
several saw the same thing, so they may, 
upon like occasions, still continue to use the 
same phrase, without any deviation, either 
from propriety of language, or the truth of 
things ; but, if the term same be used in the 
acceptation of philosophers, who pretend to 
an abstracted notion of identity, then, 
according to their sundry definitions of this 
term, (for it is not yet agreed wherein that 
philosophic identity consists,) it may or 
may not be possible for divers persons to 
perceive the same thing ; but whether phi- 
losophers shall think fit to call a thing the 
same or no is, I conceive, of small import- 
ance. Men may dispute about identity and 
diversity, without any real difference in 
their thoughts and opinions, abstracted from 
names." 

Upon the whole, I apprehend that Berk- 
eley has carried this attempt to reconcile 
his system to the vulgar opinion farther 
than reason supports him ; and he was no 
doubt tempted to do so, from a just appre- 
hension that, in a controversy of this kind, 
the common sense of mankind is the most 
formidable antagonist. 

Berkeley has employed much pains and 
ingenuity to shew that his system, if re- 
ceived and believed, would not be attended 
with those bad consequences in the conduct 
of life, which superficial thinkers may be apt 
to impute to it. His system dees not take 
away or make any alteration upon our plea- 
sures or our pains : our sensations, whether 
agreeable or disagreable, are the, same upon 
his system as upon any other. These are real 
things, and the only things that interest us. 
[ 168] They are produced in us according to 
certain laws of nature, by which our con- 
duct will be directed in attaining the one, 
and avoiding the other ; and it is of no 
moment to us, whether they are produced 
immediately by the operation of some power- 
ful intelligent being upon our minds ; or 
by the mediation of some inanimate being 
which we call matter. 

The evidence of an all-governing mind, 
so far from being weakened, seems to appear 
even in a more striking light upon his 
hypothesis, than upon the common one. 
The powers which inanimate matter is. sup- 
posed to -possess, have always been the 
stronghold of atheists, to which they had 
recourse in defence of their system. This 
fortress of atheism must be most effectually 
overturned, if there is no such thing as 
matter in the universe. In all this the 
Bishop reasons justly and acutely. But 
there is one uncomfortable consequence of 
his system, which he seems not to have at- 
["168, 169] 



tended to, and from which it will be found 
difficult, if at all possible, to guard it. 

The consequence I mean is this — that, 
although it leaves us sufficient evidence of a 
supreme intelligent mind, it seems to take 
away all the evidence we have of other 
intelligent beings like ourselves. What I 
call a father, a brother, or a friend, is only 
a parcel of ideas in my own mind ; and, being 
ideas in my mind, they cannot possibly have 
that relation to another mind which they have 
to mine, any more than the pain felt by me 
can be the individual pain felt by another. I 
can find no principle in Berkeley's system, 
which affords me even probable ground to 
conclude that there are other intelligent 
beings, like myself, in the relations of father, 
brother, friend, or fellow-citizen. I am left 
alone, as the only creature of God in the 
universe, in that forlorn state of egoism 
into which it is said some of the disciples of 
Des Cartes were brought by his philo- 
sophy.* [169] 

Of all the opinions that have ever been 
advanced by philosophers, this of Bishop 
Berkeley, that there is no material world, 
seems the strangest, and the most apt to 
bring philosophy into ridicule with plain 
men who are guided by the dictates of nature 
and common sense. And, it will not, I ap- 
prehend, be improper to trace this progeny 
of the doctrine of ideas from its origin, and 
to observe its gradual progress, till it acquired 
such strength that a pious and learned 
bishop had the boldness to usher it into the 
world, as demonstrable from the principles 
of philosophy universally received, and as 
an admirable expedient for the advance- 
ment of knowledge and for the defence of 
religion. 

During the reign of the Peripatetic phi- 
losophy, men were little disposed to doubt, 
and much to dogmatize. The existence of 
the objects of sense was held as a first prin- 
ciple ; and the received doctrine was, that 
the sensible species or idea is the very form 
of the external object, just separated from 
the matter of it, and sent into the mind that 
perceives it ; so that we find no appearance 
of scepticism about the existence of mat- 
ter under that philosophy. -f- 

Des Cartes taught men to doubt even of 
those things that had been taken for first 
principles. He rejected X the doctrine of 



* In which the scul, like the unhappy Dido— 
^— " semperque relinqui 
Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur 
Ire viam." — H. 
f Thi^ is not the case. It could easily be shewn 
that, in the schools of the middle ages, the arguments 
in favour of Idealism were fully understood ; and 
they would certainly have obtained numerous parti- 
sans, had it not been seen that such a philosophical 
opinion involved a theological heresy touching the 
eucharist This was even recognised by St Augus- 
tine— H 
J Alter many of the Peripatetics themselves — H. 



28(5 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



JJESSAY il. 



species or ideas coming from objects ; but 
still maintained that what we immediately 
perceive, is not the external object, but an 
idea or image of it in our mind. This led 
some of his disciples into Egoism, and to dis- 
believe the existence of every creature in the 
universe but themselves and their own ideas. * 

But Des Cartes himself — either from 
dread of the censure of the church, which 
he took great care not to provoke; or to shun 
the ridicule of the world, which might have 
crushed his system at once, as it did that of 
the Egoists ;* or, perhaps, from inward 
conviction — was resolved to support the ex- 
istence of matter. To do this consistently 
with his principles, he found himself obliged 
to have recourse to arguments that are far- 
fetched, and not very cogent. Sometimes 
he argues that our senses are given us by 
God, who is no deceiver ; and, therefore, 
we ought to believe their testimony. [170] 
But this argument is weak ; because, accord- 
ing to his principles, our senses testify no 
more but that we have certain ideas : and, 
if we draw conclusions from this testimony, 
which the premises will not support, we 
deceive ourselves. To give more force to 
this weak argument, he sometimes adds, 
that we have by nature a strong propensity 
to believe that there is an external world 
corresponding to our ideas. + 

Malebranche thought that this strong 
propensity is not a sufficient reason for be- 
lieving the existence of matter ; and that it 
is to be received as an article of faith, not 
certainly discoverable by reason. He is 
aware that faith comes by hearing ; and that 
it may be said that prophets, apostles, and 
miracles are only ideas in our minds. But 
to this he answers, that, though these things 
are only ideas, yet faith turns them into 
realities ; and this answer, he hopes, will 
satisfy those who are not too morose. 

It may perhaps seem strange that Locke, 
who wrote so much about ideas, should not 
see those consequences which Berkeley 
thought so obviously deducible from that 
doctrine. Mr Locke surely was not willing 
that the doctrine of ideas should be thought 
to be loaded with such consequences. He 
acknowledges that the existence of a mate- 
rial world is not to be received as a first 
principle — nor is it demonstrable; but he 
offers the best arguments for it he can ; and 
supplies the weakness of his arguments by 
this observation — that we have such evi- 



* See above, p. 269, note 
187.- H. 



and below, under p. 



t We are only by nature led to believe in the exist- 
ence of an outer world, because we are by nature led 
to believe that we have an immediate knowledge of 
it as existing. Now, Des Cartes and the philosophers 
in general (is Reid an exception?) hold that we are 
deluded in the latter belief; and yet they argue, on 
the authority of the former, that an external world 
exists. — H. 



dence as is sufficient to direct us in pur- 
suing the good and avoiding the ill we may 
receive from external things, beyond which 
we have no concern. 

There is, indeed, a single passage in 
Locke's essay, which may lead one to con- 
jecture that he had a glimpse of that sys- 
tem which Berkeley afterwards advanced, 
but thought proper to suppress it within his 
own breast. [171] The passage is in Book 
4, c. 10, where, having proved the existence 
of an eternal intelligent mind, he comes 
to answer those who conceive that matter 
also must be eternal, because we cannot 
conceive how it could be made out of 
nothing ; and having observed that the 
creation of mind requires no less power than 
the creation of matter, he adds what fol- 
lows : — " Nay, possibly, if we could eman- 
cipate ourselves from vulgar notions, and 
raise our thoughts, as far as they would 
reach, to a closer contemplation of things, 
we might be able to aim at some dim and 
seeming conception, how matter might at 
first be made and begin to exist, by the 
power of that eternal first Being ; but to 
give beginning and being to a spirit, would 
be found a more inconceivable effect of om- 
nipotent power. But this being what would 
perhaps lead us too far from the notions on 
which the philosophy now in the world is 
built, it would not be pardonable to deviate 
so far from them, or to inquire, so far as 
grammar itself would authorize, if the com- 
mon settled opinion opposes it ; especially 
in this place, where the received doctrine 
serves well enough to our present purpose.* 

It appears from this passage — First, That 
Mr Locke had some system in his mind, 
perhaps not fully digested, to which we 
might be led, by raising our thoughts to a 
closer contemplation of things, and. emanci- 
pating them from vulgar notions ; Secondly, 
That this system would lead so far from the 
notions on which the philosophy now in the 
world is built, that he thought proper to 
keep it within his own breast ; Thirdly, 
That it might be doubted whether this sys- 
tem differed so far from the common settled 
opinion in reality, as it seemed to do in 
words ; Fourthly, By this system, we might 
possibly be enabled to aim at some dim and 
seeming conception how matter might at 
first be made and begin to exist ; but it 
would give no aid in conceiving how a 
spirit might be made. These are the cha- 
racteristics of that system which Mr Locke 
had in his mind, and thought it prudent to 
suppress. May they not lead to a probable 
conjecture, that it was the same, or some- 
thing similar to that of Bishop Berkeley ? 

* Mr Stewart plausibly supposes that this passage 
contains rather an anticipation of Boscovich's Theory 
of - Matter, than of Berkeley's Theory of Idealism. 
Philosophical Essays, p. 64. But see note F. — H. 

[170, 171] 



chap. x.J OF THE SENTIMENTS OF BISHOP BERKELEY. 



287 



According to Berkeley's system, God's creat- 
ing the material world at such a time, means 
no more but that he decreed from that time, 
to produce ideas in the minds of finite spirits, 
in that order and according to those rules 
which we call the laws of Nature. [172] 
This, indeed, removes all difficulty, in con- 
ceiving how matter was created ; and 
Berkeley does not fail to take notice of the 
advantage of his system on that account. 
But his system gives no aid in conceiving 
how a spirit may be made. It appears, 
therefore, that every particular Mr Locke 
has hinted, with regard to that system which 
he had in his mind, but thought it prudent 
to suppress, tallies exactly with the system 
of Berkeley. If we add to this, that 
Berkeley's system follows from Mr Locke's, 
by very obvious consequence, it seems rea- 
sonable to conjecture, from the passage now 
quoted, that he was not unaware of that 
consequence, but left it to those who should 
come after him to carry his principles their 
full length, when they should by time be 
better established, and able to bear the shock 
of their opposition to vulgar notions. Mr 
Norris, in his " Essay towards the Theory 
of the Ideal or Intelligible World," pub- 
lished in 1701, observes, that the material 
world is not an object of sense ; because 
sensation is within us, and has no object. 
Its existence, therefore, he says, is a collec- 
tion of reason, and not -a very evident one. 

From this detail we may learn that the 
doctrine of ideas, as it was new-modelled 
byT)es Cartes, looked with an unfriendly 
aspect upon the material world ; and, al- 
though philosophers were very unwilling to 
give up either, they found it a very difficult 
task to reconcile them to each other. In 
this state of things, Berkeley, I think, is 
reputed the first who had the daring reso- 
lution to give up the material world alto- 
gether, as a sacrifice to the received phi- 
losophy of ideas. 

But we ought not, in this historical sketch, 
to omit an author of far inferior name, 
Arthur Collier, Rector of Langford Magna, 
near Sarum. He published a book in 1713, 
which he calls " Clavis Universalis ; or, a 
New Inquiry after Truth ; being a demon- 
stration of the non-existence or impossibility 
of an external world." His arguments are the 
same in substance with Berkeley's ; and he 
appears to understand the whole strength of 
his cause. [173] Though he is not deficient 
in metaphysical acuteness, his style is dis- 
agreeable, being full of conceits, of new- 
coined words, scholastic terms, and per- 
plexed sentences. He appears to be well 
acquainted with Des Cartes, Malebranche, 
and Norris, as well as with Aristotle and 
the schoolmen. But, what is very strange, 
it does not appear that he had ever heard 
of Locke's Essay, which had been pub- 
[172-174] 



lished twenty-four years, or of Berkeley's 
" Principles of Knowledge," which had 
been published three years. 

He says he had been ten years firmly 
convinced of the non-existence of an ex- 
ternal world, before he ventured to publish 
his book. He is far from thinking, as Ber- 
keley does, that the vulgar are of his opi- 
nion. If his book should make any con- 
verts to his system, (of which he expresses 
little hope, though he has supported it by 
nine demonstrations,) he takes pains to 
shew that his disciples, notwithstanding 
their opinion, may, with the unenlightened, 
speak of material things in the common 
style. He himself had scruples of con- 
science about this for some time ; and, if 
he had not got over them, he must have 
shut his lips for ever ; but he considered 
that God himself has used this style in 
speaking to men in the Holy Scripture, and 
has thereby sanctified it to all the faithful ; 
and that to the pure all things are pure. 
He thinks his opinion may be of great 
use, especially in religion ; and applies it, 
in particular, to put an end to the con- 
troversy about Christ's presence in the 
sacrament. 

I have taken the liberty to give this 
short account of Collier's book, because I 
believe it is rare, and little known. I have 
only seen one copy of it, which is in the 
University library of Glasgow. • [174] 



CHAPTER XI 

bishop Berkeley's sentiments of the 
nature of ideas. 

I pass over the sentiments of Bishop 
Berkeley, with respect to abstract ideas, 
and with respect to space and time, as 
things which may more properly be consi- 
dered in another place. But I must take 
notice of one part of his system, wherein he 

* This work, though of extreme rarity, and long 
absolutely unknown to the philosophers or this coun- 
try, hart excited, from the first, the attention of the 
German metaphysicians. A long analysis of it was 
given in the " Acta Eruditorum ;" it is found quoted 
by Bilfinger, and other Lebnitzians; and was sub- 
sequently translated into German, with controver- 
sial notes by Professor Eschenbach of Rostock, in his 
" Collection of the principal writers who deny the 
Reality of their own Body and of the whole Corporeal 
World," 1756. The late learned Dr Parr had long 
the intention of publishing the work oi Collier along 
with some other rare metaphysical treatses. He did 
not, however, accomplish his purpose; which in. 
volved, likewu-e, an introductory disquisition by him- 
self ; but a complete impression ot the " Clavis Univer- 
salis" and four other tracts, was found, after his 
death ; and this having been purchased by Mr Lum- 
ley, has, by him, been recently published, under the 
title—" Metaphysical Tracts, by English Philoso- 
phers of the Eighteenth Century," &c. London: 
1837. A very small edition of the " Clavis" had been 
printed in Edinburgh, by private subscription, in th« 
previous year. A Life of Collier has likewise re- 
cently appeared.— H. 



288 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



seems to have deviated from the common 
opinion about ideas. 

Though he sets out in his principles of 
knowledge, by telling us that it is evident 
the objects of human knowledge are ideas, 
and builds his whole system upon this prin- 
ciple ; yet, in the progress of it, he finds 
that there are certain objects of human 
knowledge that are not ideas, but things 
which have a permanent existence. The 
objects of knowledge, of which we have no 
ideas, are our own minds, and their various 
operations, other finite minds, and the 
Supreme Mind. The reason why there 
can be no ideas of spirits and their opera- 
tions, the author informs us is this, That 
ideas are passive, inert, unthinking beings ;* 
they cannot, therefore, be the image or 
likeness of things that have thought, and 
will, and active power ; we have notions of 
minds, and of their operations, but not 
ideas. We know what we mean by think- 
ing, willing, and perceiving ; we can rea- 
son about beings endowed with those 
powers, but we have no ideas of them. A 
spirit or miud is the only substance or 
support wherein the unthinking beings or 
ideas can exist ; but that this substance 
which supports or perceives ideas, should 
itself be an idea, or like an idea, is evidently 
absurd. 

He observes, farther, Princip. sect. 142, 
that " all relations, including an act of the 
mind, we cannot properly be said to have 
an idea, but rather a notion of the relations 
or habitudes between things. [175] But 
if, in the modern way, the word idea is 
extended to spirits, and relations, and acts, 
this is, after all, an affair of verbal con- 
cern ; yet it conduces to clearness and pro- 
priety, that we distinguish things very dif- 
ferent by different names." 

This is an important part of Berkeley's 
system, and deserves attention. We are 
led by it to divide the objects of human 
knowledge into two kinds. The first is ideas, 
which we have by our five senses ; they 
have no existence when they are not per- 
ceived, and exist only in the minds of those 
who perceive them. The second kind of 
objects comprehends spirits, their acts, and 
the relations and habitudes of things. Of 
these we have notions, but no ideas. No 
idea can represent them, or have any simi- 
litude to them : yet we understand what 
they mean, and we can speak with under- 
standing, and reason about them, without 
ideas. 

This account of ideas is very different 
from that which Locke has given. In his 
system, we have no knowledge where we 
have no ideas. Every thought must have 



• Berkeley is one of the philosophers who rea'ly 
held the doctrine of ideas, erroneously, by Reid, at- 
tributed to all— H. 



an idea for its immediate object. In Ber- 
keley's, the most important objects are 
known without ideas. In Locke's system, 
there are two sources of our ideas, sensa- 
tion and reflection. In Berkeley's, sensa- 
tion is the only source, because of the objects 
of reflection there can be no ideas. We 
know them without ideas. Locke divides 
our ideas into those of substances, modes, 
and relations. In Berkeley's system, there 
are no ideas of substances, or of relations ; 
but notions only. And even in the class of 
modes, the operations of our own minds 
are things of which we have distinct notions ; 
but no ideas. 

We ought to do the j ustice to Malebranche 
to acknowledge that, in this point, as well 
as in many others, his system comes nearer 
to Berkeley's than the latter seems willing 
to own. That author tells us that there 
are four different ways in which we come 
to the knowledge of things. To know things 
by their ideas, is only one of the four. [176] 
He affirms that we have no idea of our 
own mind, or any of its modifications : that 
we know these things by consciousness, 
without ideas. Whether these two acute 
philosophers foresaw the consequences that 
may be drawn from the system of ideas, 
taken in its full extent, and which were after- 
wards drawn by Mr Hume, I cannot pre- 
tend to say. If they did, their regard to 
religion was too great to permit them to ad- 
mit those consequences, or the principles 
with which they were necessarily connected. 

However this may be, if there be so many 
things that may be apprehended and known 
without ideas, this very naturally suggests 
a scruple with regard to those that are left : 
for it may be said, If we can apprehend 
and reason about the world of spirits, with- 
out ideas, Is it not possible that we may 
apprehend and reason about a material 
world, without ideas ? If consciousness 
and reflection furnish us with notions of 
spirits and of their attributes, without ideas, 
may not our senses furnish us with notions 
of bodies and their attributes, without ideas ? 

Berkeley foresaw this objection to his 
system, and puts it in the mouth of Hylas, 
in the following words : — Dial. 3, Hylas. 
" If you can conceive the mind of God, 
without having an idea of it, why may not 
I be allowed to conceive the existence of 
matter, notwithstanding that I have no idea 
of it ?" The answer of Philonous is — 
" You neither perceive matter objectively, 
as you do an inactive being or idea, nor 
know it, as you do yourself, by a reflex act, 
neither do you immediately apprehend it by 
similitude of the one or the other, nor yet 
collect it by reasoning from that which you 
know immediately ; all which makes the 
case of matter widely different from that of 
the Deity." 

T175, 1?6"| 



chap, xi.] BISHOP BERKELEY'S SENTIMENTS OF IDEAS. 



289 



Though Hylas declares himself satisfied 
with this answer, I confess I am not : be- 
cause, if I may trust the faculties that God 
has given me, I do perceive matter objec- 
tively — that is, something which is extended 
and solid, which may be measured and 
weighed, is the immediate object of my touch 
and sight.* [177] And this object I take to 
be matter, and not an idea. And, though I 
have been taught by philosophers, that what 
I immediately touch is an idea, and not 
matter ; yet I have never been able to dis- 
cover this by the most accurate attention 
to my own perceptions. 

It were to be wished that this ingenious 
author had explained what he means by 
ideas, as distinguished from notions. The 
word notion, being a word in common lan- 
guage, is well understood. All men mean 
by it, the conception, the apprehension, or 
thought which we have of any object of 
thought. A notion, therefore, is an act 
of the mind conceiving or thinking of some 
object. The object of thought may be 
either something that is in the mind, or 
something that is not in the mind. It may 
be something that has no existence, or 
something that did, or does, or shall exist. 
But the notion which I have of that ob- 
ject, i3 an act of my mind which really 
exists while I think of the object ; but has 
no existence when I do not think of it. 
The word idea, in popular language, has 
precisely the same meaning as the word 
notion. But philosophers have another 
meaning to the word idea ; and what that 
meaning is, I think, is very difficult to say. 

The whole of Bishop Berkeley's system 
depends upon the distinction between no- 
tions and ideas ; and, therefore, it is worth 
while to find, if we are able, what those 
things are which he calls ideas, as distin- 
guished from notions. 

For this purpose, we may observe, that 
he takes notice of two kinds of ideas — the 
ideas of sense, and the ideas of imagina- 
tion. " The ideas imprinted on the senses 
by the Author of Nature,'' he says, " are 
called real things ; and those excited in the 
imagination, being less regular, vivid, and 
constant, are more properly termed ideas, 
or images of things, which they copy and 
represent. [178] B ut then our sensations, 
be they never so vivid and distinct, are 
nevertheless ideas ; that is, they exist in 
the mind, or are perceived by it as truly 
as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas 
of sense are allowed to have more reality 
in them — that is, to be more strong, or- 
derly, and coherent — than the creatures of 



* Doe* Reidmean to surrender his doctrine, hat 
perception i< a conception —that exf < nsion and figure 
are not known by sense, hut are notions suggested on 
the occasion of sensation ? If he does not, his Ian. 
guage in the text is inaccurate. — H. 
[ 177-179] 



the mind. They are also less dependent 
on the spirit, or thinking substance which 
perceives them, in that they are excited by 
the will of another and more powerful 
spirit ; yet still they are ideas ; and cer- 
tainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can 
exist, otherwise than in a mind perceiving 
it." Principles, § 33. 

From this passage we see that, by the 
ideas of sense, the author means sensa- 
tions ;* and this, indeed, is evident from 
many other passages, of which I shall men- 
tion a few Principles, § 5. " Light and 

colours, heat and cold, extension and figure — 
in a word, the things we see and feel — what 
are they but so many sensations, notions, 
ideas, or impressions on the sense ? — and is 
it possible to separate, even in thought, 
any of these from perception ? For my 
part, I might as easily divide a thing from 
itself." § 18. "As for our senses, by 
them we have the knowledge only of our 
sensations, ideas, or those things that are 
immediately perceived by sense, call them 
what you will ; — but they do not inform us 
that things exist without the mind, or un- 
perceived, like to those which are per- 
ceived." § 25. " All our ideas, sensa- 
tions, or the things which we perceive, by 
whatever names they may be distinguished, 
are visibly inactive ; there is nothing of 
power or agency included in them." 

This, therefore, appears certain — that, 
by the ideas of sense, the author meant the 
sensations we have by means of our senses. 
I have endeavoured to explain the meaning 
of the word sensation, Essay I., chap. 1, 
[p. 229,] and refer to the explication there 
given of it, which appears to me to be per- 
fectly agreeable to the sense in which Bishop 
Berkeley uses it.* 

As there can be no notion or thought 
but in a thinking being ; so there can be 
no sensation but in a sentient being. [ 1 79] 
It is the act or feeling of a sentient being ; 
its very essence consists in its being felt. 
Nothing can resemble a sensation, but a 
similar sensation in the same or in some 
other mind. To think that any quality in 
a thing that is inanimate can resemble a 
sensation, is a great absurdity. In all this, 
I cannot but agree perfectly with Bishop 
Berkeley ; and I think his notions of sensa- 



* How it ran bei asserted, that by ideas of sense 
Berkeley meant only what Reiri did by sensations, 
I cannot comprehend. That the former used ideas 
of sense and sensations as convertible expressions, is 
true. But then Berkeley's sensation was equivalent 
to Reid's sensation plus his perception. This is mani- 
fest even by the passages adduced in the text. In 
that from § v. .of the " Principles,'' Berkeley ex. 
pressly calls extension and figure, sensations. But 
it is a fundamental principle of Reid's philosophy, 
not only that neither extension nor figure, but that 
none of the primary qualities, are sensations. To 
make a single quotation— "'Yhv primary qualities," 
he says, '* are. neither sensations, nor are they the 
resemblances of sensations." — Infra, p. 238. — H. 

U 



290 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



tion much more distinct and accurate than 
Locke's, who thought that the primary 
qualities of body are resemblances of our 
sensations,* but that the secondary are not. 

That we have many sensations by means 
of our external senses, there can be no 
doubt ; and, if he is pleased to call those 
ideas, there ought to be no dispute about 
the meaning of a word. But, says Bishop 
Berkeley, by our senses, we have the know- 
ledge, only of our sensations or ideas, call 
them which you will. I allow him to call 
them which he will ; but I would have the 
word orcein this sentence to be well weighed, 
because a great deal depends upon it. 

For, if it be true that, by our senses, we 
have the knowledge of our sensations only, 
then his system must be admitted, and the 
existence of a material world must be given 
up as a dream. No demonstration can be 
more invincible than this. If we have any 
knowledge of a material world, it must be 
by the senses : but, by the senses, we have 
no knowledge but of our sensations only ; 
and our sensations have no resemblance of 
anything that can be in a material world, f 
The only proposition in this demonstration 
which admits of doubt is, that, by our senses, 
we have the knowledge of our sensations 
only, and of nothing else. If there are ob- 
jects of the senses which are not sensations, 
his arguments do not touch them : they may 
be things which do not exist in the mind, as 
all sensations do ; they may be things of which, 
by our senses, we have notions, though no 
ideas ; just as, by consciousness and reflection, 
we have notions of spirits and of their oper- 
ations, without ideas or sensations.^ [180] 

Shall we say, then, that, by our senses, 
we have the knowledge of our sensations 
only ; and that they give us no notion of 
anything but of our sensations ? Perhaps 
this has been the doctrine of philosophers, 
and not of Bishop Berkeley alone, otherwise 
he would have supported it by arguments. 
Mr Locke calls all the notions we have by 
our senses, ideas of sensation ; and in this 
has been very generally followed. Hence 
it seems a very natural inference, that ideas 

* Here again we have a criticism which proceeds 
on. the erroneous implication, that Locke meant by 
sensation what ,:eid himself did. If for sensation 
we substitute perception, (and by sensation Locke 
denoted both sensation proper and perception proper,) 
there remains nothing to censure ; for Reid main- 
tains that " our senses give us a direct and a distinct 
notion of the primary qualities, and inform us what 
they are in themselves " (infra, p. 237 ;) which is only 
Locke's meaning in other words. 1 he same observa- 
tion applies to many of the following passages — H. 
t See the last note.— H. 

t But, unless that, be admitted, which the natural 
conviction of mankind certifies, that we have an 
immediate perception— a consciousness— ot external 
and extended existences, it makes no difference, in 
regaid to the conclusion of the Idealist, whether 
it hat we are conscious of in perception be supposed 
an entity in the mind, (an idea in Reids meaning,) 
or a modification of the mind, (a notion or concep- 
tion.) See above, p. 128, no.es *. — H. 



of sensation are sensations. But philoso- 
phers may err : let us hear the dictates of 
common sense upon this point. 

Suppose I am pricked with a pin, I ask, 
Is the pain 1 feel, a sensation ? Undoubtedly 
it is. There can be nothing that resembles 
pain in any inanimate being. But I ask 
again, Is the pin a sensation ? To this 
question I find myself under a necessity of 
answering, that the pin is not a sensation, 
nor can have the least resemblance to any 
sensation. The pin has length and thick- 
ness, and figure and weight. A sensation 
can have none of those qualities. I am not 
more certain that the pain I feel is a sensa- 
tion, than that the pin is not a sensation ; 
yet the pin is an object of sense ; and I am 
as certain that I perceive its figure and 
hardness by my senses, as that I feel pain 
when pricked by it.* 

Having said so much of the ideas of sense 
in Berkeley's system, we are next to con- 
sider the account he gives of the ideas of 
imagination. Of these he says, Principles, 
§ 28 — " I find I can excite ideas in my 
mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the 
scene as oft as I think fit, It is no more 
than willing ; and straightway this or that idea 
arises in my fancy ; and by the same power 
it is obliterated, and makes way for another. 
This making and unmaking of ideas, doth 
very properly denominate the mind active. 
Thus much is certain, and grounded on 
experience. Our sensations," he says, " are 
called real things ; the ideas of imagination 
are more properly termed ideas, or images 
of things ;''-f- that is, as I apprehend, they 
are the images of our sensations. [181] 
It might surely be expected that we should 
be well acquainted with the ideas of imagin- 
ation, as they are of our making ; yet, after 
all the Bishop has said about them, I am 
at a loss to know what they are. 

I would observe, in the first place, with 
regard to these ideas of imagination — that 
they are not sensations ; for surely sensation 
is the work of the senses, and not of imagin- 
ation ; and, though pain be a sensation, the 
thought of pain, when I am not pained, is 
no sensation. 

I observe, in the second place — that I can 
find no distinction between ideas of imagin- 
ation and notions, which the author says 
are not ideas. I can easily distinguish be- 

« This illustration is taken from Des Cartes. In 
this paragraph, the term sensation is again not used 
in the<extension given to it by the philosophers in 
question — H. 

t Berkeley's real words are — " 1 he ideas imprint, 
ed.on the Senses by the Author of Nature are called 
real things, and those excited in the Imagination 
being less regular, vivid and constant, are more pro- 
perly termed ideas-or images of things, which thty 
copy and represent. But then our Sensations, be they 
never so vivid and. dist net, are nevertheless ideas — 
that is, they exis in the mind, or are perceived by 
it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing.'' Sect, 
xxxiii.— H. 

f ISO, lfl] 



chap. xi. I BISHOP BERKELEY'S SENTIMENTS OF IDEAS. 



291 



tween a notion and a sensation. It is one 
thing to say, I have the sensation of pain. 
It is another thing to say, I have a notion of 
pain. The last expression signifies no more 
than that I understand what is meant by the 
word pain. The first signifies that I really 
feel pain. But I can find no distinction 
between the notion of pain and the imagin- 
ation of it, or indeed between the notion 
of anything else, and the imagination of it. 
I can, therefore, give no account of the 
distinction which Berkeley makes between 
ideas of imagination and notions, which, he 
says, are not ideas. They seem to me per- 
fectly to coincide.* 

He seems, indeed, to say, that the ideas 
of imagination differ not in land from those 
of the senses, but only in the degree of their 
regularity, vivacity, and constancy. " They 
are," says he, " less regular, vivid, and con- 
stant." This doctrine was afterwards greed- 
ily embraced by Mr Hume, and makes a 
main pillar of his system ; but it cannot be 
reconciled to common sense, to which Bishop 
Berkeley professes a great regard. For, 
according to this doctrine, if we compare the 
state of a man racked with the gout, with 
his state when, being at perfect ease, he 
relates what he has suffered, the difference 
of these two states is only this — that, in the 
last, the pain is less regular, vivid, and con- 
stant, than in the first. [182] We cannot 
possibly assent to this. Every man knows 
that he can relate the pain he suffered, not 
only without pain, but with pleasure ; and 
that to suffer pain, and to think of it, are 
things which totally differ in kind, and not 
in degree only.-j- 

We see, therefore, upon the whole, that, 
according to this system, of the most im- 
portant objects of knowledge — that is, of 

* Yet the distinction of ideas, strictly so called, and 
notions, is one of the most common and important in 
the philosophy of mind. • Nor do we owe it, as has been 
asserted, to Berkeley. It was virtually taken by Des 
Cartes and the Cartesians, in their discrimination of 
ideas of imagination and ide s*of intelligence; it was 
in terms vindicated against Locke, by t-erjeant, Stil- 
Ungfleet,^Norris, Z. Mayne, Bishop Brown, and 
others; Bonnet signalized it; and, under the con. 
trast of Anschauungen -and Begriffe, it has long been 
an» established and classical discrimination with the 
philosophers of Germany. Nay, Keid himself sug- 
gests it in the distinction he requires between ima- 
gination and conception, a'distinction which he unfor- 
tunately did not. carry out, and which Mr Stewart 
still more unhappily again perverted. See below, p. 
371. The terms notion-and conception, (or more cor- 
rectly- concept in this* sense, ) should- be reserved 
taexpress what we comprehend but cannot picture 
in imagination, such as- a relation, a general term, 
&o. The word" idea, as- one prostituted to all mean- 
ings, it were perhaps better altogether to discard. 
As for the representations of '.imagination' or phan- 
tasy, I would employ the terms image or phantasm, it 
being distinctly understood> that these terms are ap- 
plied to denote the re-presentations, not of our visible 
perceptions merely, as the terms taken literally would 
indicate, but of our sensible perceptions in general. — 
H. 

■} There is here a confusion between pain considered 
as a feeling, and as the cognition of a feeling, to 
which the philosophers would object — H. 
[182, 183] 



spirits, of their operations, and of the rela- 
tions of things — we have no ideas at all ;* 
we have notions of them, but not ideas ; the 
ideas we have are those of sense, and those 
of imagination. The first are the sensa- 
tions we have by means of our senses, whose 
existence no man can deny, because he is 
conscious of them ; and whose nature hath 
been explained by this author with great 
accuracy. As to the ideas of imagination, 
he hath left us much in the dark. He makes 
them images of our sensations ; though, 
according to his own doctrine, nothing can 
resemble a sensation but a sensation. -f- He 
seems to think that they differ from sensa- 
tions only in the degree of their regularity, 
vivacity, and constancy. But this cannot 
be reconciled to the experience of mankind; 
and, besides this mark, which cannot be 
admitted, he hath given us no other mark 
by which they may be distinguished from 
notions. Nay, it may be observed, that the 
very reason he gives why we can have no 
ideas of the acts of the mind about its ideas, 
nor of the relations of things, is applicable 
to what he calls ideas of imagination. 
Principles, § 142. " We may not, I think, 
strictly be said to have an idea of an active 
being, or of an action, although Ave may be 
said to have a notion of them. I have some 
knowledge or notion of my mind, and its 
acts about ideas, in as much as I know or 
understand what is meant by these words. 
[I will not say that the terns Idea and 
Notion may not be usee convertibly, if the 
world will have it so. But yet it conduces to 
clearness and propriety that we distinguish 
things very different by different names.] 
It is also to be remarked, that all relations 
including an act of the mind, we cannot so 
properly be said to have an idea, but rather 
a notion of the relations and habitudes be- 
tween things. " From this it follows, that our 
imaginations are not properly ideas, but no- 
tions, because they include an actof the mind. 
[ 1 83 ] For he tells us, in a passage already 
quoted, that they are creatures of the mind, 
of its own framing, and that it makes and 
unmakes them as it thinks fit, and from this 
is properly denominated active. If it be a 
good reason why we have not ideas, but 
notions only of relations, because they in- 
clude an act of the mind, the same reason 
must lead us to conclude, that our imagina- 
tions are notions and not ideas, since they 
are made and unmade by the mind as it 
thinks fit : and, from this, it is properly de- 
nominated active. £ 

t * That is, no images of them in the phantasy Reid 
h'imself would not say that such could be imagined. — 
H. 

t Berkeley does not say so in the meaning sup- 
posed. — H. 

t Imagination is an ambiguous word ; it means 
either the act of imagining, or the product— i. e , the 
image imagined. Of the mimer, Beikeley held, we 
can form a notion, but not an idea, in the sense ht 

U 2 



292 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



f essay ir. 



When so much has been written, and so 
many disputes raised about ideas, it were 
desirable that we knew what they are, and 
to what category or class of beings they be- 
long. In this we might expect satisfaction 
in the writings of Bishop Berkeley, if any- 
where, considering his known accuracy and 
precision in the use of words ; and it is for 
this reason that I have taken so much pains 
to find out what he took them to be. 

After ali, if I understand what he calls the 
ideas of sense, they are the seusations which 
we have by means of our five senses ; but 
they are, he says, less properly termed ideas. 

I understand, likewise, what he calls 
notions ; but they, says he, are very differ- 
ent from ideas, though, in the modern, way, 
often called by that name. 

The ideas of imagination remain, which 
are most properly termed ideas, as he says ; 
and, with regard to these, I am still very 
much in the dark. When I imagine a lion 
or an elephant, the lion or elephant is the 
object imagined. The act of the mind, in 
conceiving that object, is the notion, the 
conception, or imagination of the object. If 
besides the object, and the act of the mind 
about it, there be something called the idea 
of the object, I know not what it is.* 

If we consult other authors who have 
treated of ideas, we shall find as little satis- 
faction with regard to the meaning of this 
philosophical term. [184] The vulgar 
have adopted it ; but they only mean by 
it the notion or conception we have of any 
object, especially our more abstract or gen- 
eral notions. When it is thus put to sig- 
nify the operation of the mind about objects, 
whether in conceiving, remembering, or 
perceiving, it is well understood. But phi- 
losophers will have ideas to be the objects 
of the mind's operations, and not the oper- 
ations themselves. There is, indeed, great 
variety of objects of thought. We can 
think of minds, and of their operations ; of 
bodies, and of their qualities and relations. 
If ideas are not comprehended under any of 
these classes, I am at a loss to comprehend 
what they are. 

In ancient philosophy, ideas were said to 
be immaterial forms, which, according to 
one system, existed from all eternity ; and, 
according to another, are sent forth from 
the objects whose form they are.+ In mo- 
dern philosophy, they are things in the 
mind, which are the immediate objects of 
all our thoughts, and which have no exist- 
ence when we do not think of them. They 
are called the images, the resemblances, the 



u>es the term ; whereas, of the latter, we can form 
an idea by merely repeating the imaginatory act. — 
H. 

• On Reid's misconception on this point, see Note 
B. — H. 

t Nothing by the name of idea was sent off from 
objects in the ancient philosophy.— ti. 



representatives of external objects of sense ; 
yet they have neither colour, nor smell, nor 
figure, nor motion, nor any sensible quality. 
I revere the authority of philosophers, espe- 
cially where they are so unanimous ; but 
until I can comprehend what they mean by 
ideas, I must think and speak with the vulgar. 

In sensation, properly so called, I can 
distinguish two things — the mind, or sen- 
tient being, and the sensation. Whether 
the last is to be called a feeling or an oper- 
ation, I dispute not ; but it has no object 
distinct from the sensation itself. If in 
sensation there be a thir< 
idea, I know not what it 

In perception, in remembrance, and in 
conception, or imagination, I distinguish 
three things — the mind that operates, the 
operation of the mind, and the object of that 
operation.* [185] That the object per- 
ceived is one thing, and the perception of 
that object another, I am as certain as I 
can be of anything. The same may be 
said of conception, of remembrance, of love 
and hatred, of desire and aversion. In all 
these, the act of the mind about its object is 
one thing, the object is another thing. 
There must be an object, real or imaginary, 
distinct from the operation of the mind 
about it-f- Now, if in these operations the 
idea be a fourth thing different from the 
three I have mentioned, I know not what it 
is, nor have been able to learn from all that 
has been written about ideas. And if the 
doctrine of philosophers about ideas con- 
founds any two of these things which I have 
mentioned as distinct— if, for example, it 
confounds the object perceived with the 
perception of that object, and represents 
them as one and the same thing— such doc- 
trine is altogether repugnant to all that I am 
able to discover of the operations of my own 
mind ; and it is repugnant to the common 
sense of mankind, expressed in the struc- 
ture of all languages. 



CHAPTER XII. 

OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MR HUME. 

Two volumes of the " Treatise of Human 
Nature" were published in 17^9, and the 
third in 1740. The doctrine contained in 
this Treatise was published anew in a more 
popular form in Mr Hume's " Philosophical 
Essays," of which there have been various 
editions. What other authors, from the 



« See Note B.— H. 

+ If there be an imaginary object distinct from the 
act of imagination, where does it exist ? It cannot 
be external to the mind — for, ex hypothesi, it is ima- 
ginary; and, if in the mind itself, distinct from the act 
of imagination— why. what is this but the very crudest 
doctrine of species? For Reid's puzzle, see Note B. 
— H. 

[184, 185] 



chap, xii.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MR HUME. 



293 



time of Des Cartes, had called idea.*, this 
author distinguishes into two kinds — to wit, 
impressions &nd ideas; comprehending under 
the first, all our sensations, passions, and 
emotions ; and under the last, the faint 
images of these, when we remember or 
imagine them. [18G] 

He sets out with this, as a principle that 
needed no proof, and of which therefore he 
offers none — that all the perceptions of the 
human mind resolve themselves into these 
two kinds, impressions and ideas. 

As this proposition is the foundation upon 
which the whole of Mr Hume's system 
rests, and from which it is raised with great 
acuteness indeed, and ingenuity, it were to 
be wished that he had told us upon what 
authority this fundamental proposition rests. 
But we are left to guess, whether it is held 
forth as a first principle, which has its 
evidence in itself; or whether it is to be 
received upon the authority of philosophers. 

Mr Locke had taught us, that all the 
immediate objects of human knowledge are 
ideas in the mind. Bishop Berkeley, pro- 
ceeding upon this foundation, demonstrated, 
very easily, that there is no material world. 
And he thought that, for the purposes 
both of philosophy and religion, we should 
find no loss, but great benefit, in the want 
of it. But the Bishop, as became his order, 
was unwilling to give up the world of spirits. 
He saw very well, that ideas are as unfit to 
represent spirits as they are to represent 
bodies. Perhaps he saw that, if w e per- 
ceive only the ideas of spirits, we shall find 
the same difficulty in inferring their real 
existence from the existence of their ideas, as 
we find in inferring the existence of matter 
from the idea of it ; and, therefore, while he 
gives up the material world in favour of the 
system of ideas, he gives up one-half of that 
system in favour of the world of spirits ; and 
maintains that we can, without ideas, think, 
and speak, and reason, intelligibly about 
spirits, and what belongs to them. 

Mr Hume shews no such partiality in 
favour of the world of spirits. He adopts 
the theory of ideas in its full extent ; and, 
in consequence, shews that there is neither 
matter nor mind in the universe ; nothing 
but impressions and ideas. What we call 
a body, is only a bundle of sensations ; and 
what we call the mind is only a bundle of 
thoughts, passions, and emotions, without 
any subject. [187 J 

Some ages hence, it will perhaps be 
looked upon ss a curious anecdote, that 
two philosophers of the eighteenth century, 
of very distinguished rank, were led, by a 
philosophical hypothesis, one, to disbelieve 
the existence of matter, and the other, to 
disbelieve the existence both of matter and 
of mind. Such an anecdote may not be 
uninstructive, if it prove a warning to 
[18«_188J 



philosophers to beware of hypotheses, espe- 
cially when they lead to conclusions which 
contradict the principles upon which all men 
of common sense must act in common life. 

The Egoists,* whom we mentioned be- 
fore, were left far behind by Mr Hume ; 
for they believed their own existence, and 
perhaps also the existence of a Deity. But 
Mr Hume's system does not even leave him 
a self to claim the property of his impres- 
sions and ideas. 

A system of consequences, however ab- 
surd, acutely and justly drawn from a few 
principles, in very abstract matters, is of 
real utility in science, and may be made 
subservient to real knowledge. This merit 
Mr Hume's metaphysical writings have in 
a great degree. 

We had occasion before to observe, that, 
since the time of Des Cartes, philosophers, 
in t: eating of the powers of the mind, have, 
in many instances, confounded things which 
the common sense of mankind has always 
led them to distinguish, and which have 
different names in all languages. Thus, in 
the perception of an external object, all 
languages distinguish three things— the 
mind that perceives, the operation of that 
mind, which is called perception, and the 
object perceived. -f- Nothing appears more 
evident to a mind untutored by philosophy, 
than that these three are distinct things, 
which, though related, ought never to be 
confounded. [188] The structure of all 
languages supposes this distinction, and is 
built upon it. Philosophers have intro- 
duced a fourth thing in this process, which 
they call the idea of the object, which is 
supposed to be an image, or representative 
of the object, and is said to be the imme- 
diate object. The vulgar know nothing 
about this idea ; it is a creature of philo- 
sophy,introduced to account for and explain 
the manner of our perceiving external objects. 



* In supplement to no'e § at p 269, supra, in re- 
gard to the pretended sect of Egoists, there is to be 
ad led the following notices, which I did not recol- 
lect till after that note was s«n : — 

Wolf, {Psychologia Rafionalis, § SS,) after dividing 
Idealists into Egoists and Pluralists, says, inter alia, of 
the former : — " Fuit paucis alhinc annis assecla 
quidam Malebranchii, Parisiis. qui Egoi>mum pro- 
fessus est (quod mirum mihi videtur) asseclas et ipso 
nactus est." In his Vermienftige Gedankenvon Gott, 
&c, c. J, ^ 2, he also mentions this allerseltsamste 
Secte There is also an oration by Christopher 
Matthaeus Pfaff, the Chancellor of Tuebingen— 
" Be Egoismo,nova philosophica Jiaeresi," in i72v— 
which I have not seen — i hus, what I formerly ha. 
zarded, is still farther confirmed. All is vague and 
contradictory hearsay in regard to the Eg<>i.-ts. The 
French place them in Scotland ; the Scotch in Hol- 
land ; the Germans in France ; and they are variously 
stated as the immedia e disciples of Des Cartes, 
Malebranche, Spinoza. There is certainly no reason 
why an Egoistical IdealiMB should not have been 
explicitly promulgated before Fichte, (whose doctrine, 
however, is not the same;) but I have, as yet, seen 
no satisfactory grounds on which it can be shewn 
that this had actua.ly been done — H. 
t See Notes B and C— H. 



294 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



It is pleasant to observe that, while philo- 
sophers, for more than a century, have been 
labouring, by means of ideas, to explain 
perception and the other operations of the 
mind, those ideas have by degrees usurped 
the place of perception, object, and even of 
the mind itself, and have supplanted those 
very things they were brought to explain. 
Des Cartes reduced all the operations of the 
understanding to perception ; and what can 
be more natural to those who believe that 
they are only different modes of perceiving 
ideas in our own minds ? Locke confounds 
ideas sometimes with the perception of an 
external object, sometimes with the external 
object itself. In Berkeley's system, the idea 
is the only object, and yet is often con- 
founded with the perception of it. But, in 
Hume's, the idea or the impression, which 
is only a more lively idea, is mind, percep- 
tion, and object, all in one : so that, by the 
term perception, in Mr Hume's system, we 
must understand the mind itself, all its 
operations, both of understanding and will, 
and all the objects of these operations. Per- 
ception taken in this sense he divides into 
our more lively perceptions, which he calls 
impressions,* and the less lively, which he 
calls ideas. To prevent repetition, I must 
here refer the reader to some remarks made 
upon this division, Essay I. chap. 1, in the 
explication there given of the words, per- 
ceive, object, impression, [pp. 222, 223,226.] 

Philosophers hare differed very much 
with regard to the origin of our ideas, or 
the sources whence they are derived. The 
Peripatetics held that all knowledge is de- 
rived originally from the senses ;-f and this 
ancient doctrine seems to be revived by 
some late French philosophers, and by Dr 
Hartley and Dr Priestley among the Brit- 
ish. [189] Des Cartes maintained, that 
many of our ideas are innate. Locke op- 
posed the doctrine of innate ideas with 
much zeal, and employs the whole first 
book of his Essay against it. But he ad- 
mits two different sources of ideas . the 
operations of our external senses, which he 
calls sensation, by which we get all our 
ideas of body, and its attributes ; and re- 
flection upon the operations of our minds, by 
which we get the ideas of everything be- 

■ Mr Stewart {Elan. III. Addenda to vol I. p. 
43) seems to think that the word impression was 
first introduced as a. technical term, into the philo- 
sophy of mind, by Hume. This is not altogether 
correct. For, besides the instances which Mr Stewart 
himself adduces, of the illustration attempted, of the 
phenomena of memory from the analogy of an im- 
press and 3 t; ace, words corresponding to impression 
were amoiig the ancients familiarly applied to thepro- 
cessescf external perception, imagination, &c.,in the 
Atomistic, the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the 
Stoical philosophies ; while, amongmodern psycholo- 
gists, (as D< s Cartes and Oasserdi,; the term was like- 
wise in common use — H. 

T This is an incorrect, at least a too unqualified, 
statement.— H. 



longing to the mind. The main design of 
the second book of Locke's " Essay," is to 
shew, that all our simple ideas, without 
exception, are derived from the one or the 
other, or both of these sources. In doing 
this, the author h led into some paradoxes, 
although, in general, he is not fond of para- 
doxes : And had he foreseen all the con- 
sequences that may be drawn from his ac- 
count of the origin of our ideas, he would 
probably have examined it more carefully.* 

Mr Hume adopts Locke's account of the 
origin of our ideas ; and from that principle 
infers, that we have no idea of substance, 
corporeal or spiritual, no idea of power, no 
other idea of a cause, but that it is something 
antecedent, and constantly conjoined to that 
which we call its effect ; and, in a word, 
that we can have no idea of anything but 
our sensations, and the operations of mind 
we are conscious of. 

This author leaves no power to the mind 
in framing its ideas and impressions ; and, 
no wonder, since he holds that we have no 
idea of power ; and the mind is nothing but 
that succession of impressions and ideas of 
which we are intimately conscious. 

He thinks, therefore, that our impressions 
arise from unknown causes, and that the 
impressions are the causes of their corre- 
sponding ideas. By this he means no more 
but that they always go before the ideas ; 
for this is all that is necessary to constitute 
the relation of cause and effect. [190] 

As to the order and succession of our 
ideas, he holds it to be determined by three 
laws of attraction or association, which he 
takes to be original properties of the ideas, 
by which they attract, as it were, or asso- 
ciate themselves with other ideas which 
either resemble them, or which have been 
contiguous to them in time and place, or to 
which they have the relations of cause and 
effect. 

We may here observe, by the way, that 
the last of these three laws seems to be in- 
cluded in the second, since causation, ac- 
cording to him, implies no more than con- 
tiguity in time and place. -f- 



* At any rate, according to i ocke, all our know- 
ledge is a derivation from experience. — H. 

t Mr Hume says—" I do not find that any philo. 
sopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the 
principles of Association ; a subject, however, that 
seems to me very woithy of curiosity. To me there 
appears to be only three principles of connection 
among ideas: Resemblance — Contiguity in time or 
place — Cause and Effect." — Essays, vol. ii., p. 2\ — 
Aristoile, and, after him, many other philosophers, 
had, however, done this, and with even greater success 
than Hume himself. Aristotle's reduction is to the 
four following heads .- — Proximity in time— Conti- 
guity in place — Resemblance — Contrast. This is 
more correct than Hume's; for Hume's second head 
ought tc be divided into two ; while our connecting 
any particular events in the relation of cause and 
effect, is itself the result of their oi served proximity 
in time and contiguity in place ; nay, to custom and 
this empirical connection (as observed by Heid) does 



[189, 190] 



chap, xiii.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF ANTHONY ARNAULD. 295 



It is not my design at present to shew 
how Mr Hume, upon the principles he has 
borrowed from Locke and Berkeley, has, 
with great acuteness, reared a system of 
absolute scepticism, which leaves no rational 
ground to believe any one proposition, 
rather than its contrary : my intention in 
this pi ice being only to give a detail of the 
sentiments of philosophers concerning ideas 
since they became an object of speculation, 
and concerning the manner of our perceiv- 
ing external objects by their means. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



OF THE SENTIMENTS OF ANTHONY ARNAULD. 

In this sketch of the opinions of philoso- 
phers concerning ideas, we must not omit 
Anthony Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, 
who, in the year 1683, published his book 
" Of True and False Ideas," in opposition 
to the system of Malebranche before men- 
tioned. It is only about ten years since I 
could find this book, and I believe it is 
rare." [191] 

Though Arnauld wrote before Locke, 
Berkeley, and Hume, I have reserved to 
the last place some account of his senti- 
ments, because it seems difficult to deter- 
mine whether he adopted the common theory 
of ideas, or whether he is singular in reject- 
ing it altogether as a fiction of philoso- 
phers. 

The controversy between Malebranche 
and Arnauld necessarily led them to con- 
sider what kind of things ideas are— a point 
upon which other philosophers had very 
generally been silent. Both of them pro- 
fessed the doctrine universally received : 
that we perceive not material things imme- 
diately — that it is their ideas that are the 
immediate objects of our thought— and that 
it is in the idea of everything that we per- 
ceive its properties. 

It is necessary to premise that both 
these authors use the word perception, as 
Des Cartes had done before them, to sig- 
nify every operation of the understand- 
ing.-]- " To think, to know, to perceive, are 
the same thing," says Mr Arnauld, chap. 
v. def. 2. It is likewise to be observed, 
that the various operations of the mind are 
by both called modifications of the mind. 
Perhaps they were led into this phrase by 
the Cartesian doctrine, that the essence of 
the mind consists in thinking, as that of 
body consists in extension. I apprehend, 

Hume himself endeavour to reduce the principle of 
Causality altogether— H. See Notes D* andD***. 
* The treatises of Arnauld in his controversy with 
Malebranche, are to be found in the thirty. eiahth 
volume of his collected works in 4to. — H. 

t Every apprehensive, or strictly cognitive opera- 
tion of the understanding. — H. 

[191 , 192] 



therefore, that, when they make sensation, 
perception, memory, and imagination, to 
be various modifications of the mind, they 
mean no more but that these are things 
which can only exist in the mind as their 
subject. We express the same thing, by 
calling them various modes of thinking, or 
various operations of the mind.* 

The things which the mind perceives, 
says Malebranche, are of two kinds. They 
are either in the mind itself, or they are 
external to it. The things in the mind, 
are all its different modifications, its sensa- 
tions, its imaginations, its pure intellec- 
tions, its passions and affections. These 
are immediately perceived ; we are con- 
scious of them, and have no need of ideas 
to represent them to us. [192] 

Things external to the mind, are either 
corporeal or spiritual. With regard to the 
last, he thinks it possible that, in another 
state, spirits may be an immediate object 
of our understandings, and so be perceived 
without ideas ; that there may be such an 
union of spirits as that they may imme- 
diately perceive each other, and communi- 
cate their thoughts mutually, without signs 
and without ideas. 

But, leaving this as a problematical point, 
he holds it to be undeniable, that material 
things cannot be perceived immediately, 
but only by the mediation of ideas. He 
thought it likewise undeniable, that the idea 
must be immediately present to the mind, 
that it must touch the soul as it were, and 
modify its perception of the obj< ct. 

From these principles we must neces- 
sarily conclude, either that the idea is 
some modification of the human mind, or 
that it must be an idea in the Divine 
Mind, which is always intimately present 
with our minds. The matter being brought 
to this alternative, Malebranche considers 
first all the possible ways such a modifica- 
tion may be produced in our mind as that 
we call an idea of a material object, taking 
it for granted always, that it must be an 
object perceived, and something different 
from the act of the mind in perceiving it. 
He finds insuperable objections against 
every hypothesis of such ideas being pro- 
duced in our minds; and therefore con- 
cludes, that the immediate objects of per- 
ception are the ideas of the Divine Mind. 

Against this system Arnauld wrote his 
book " Of True and False Ideas." He 
does not object to the alternative men- 
tioned by Malebranche ; but he maintains, 
that ideas are modifications of our minds. 
And, finding no other modification of the 



* Modes, ox modifications of mind, in the Cartesian 
school, mean merely what some recent philosophers 
express by states of mind and include .both ihe 
active and passive ph&nomeua of the conscious sub- 
ject. The terms were used by Des Cartes as well =»s 
by his disciples. — H. 



296 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



human mind which can be called the idea 
of an external object, he says it is only 
another word for perception. Chap, v., def. 
3. [193] " I take the idea of an object, 
and the perception of an object, to be the 
same thing. I do not say whether there 
may be other things to which the name of 
idea may be given. But it is certain that 
there are ideas taken in this sense, and that 
these ideas are either attributes or modifi- 
cations of our minds."* 

This, I think, indeed, was to attack the 
system of Malebranche upon its weak side, 
and where, at the same time, an attack was 
least expected. Phdosophers had been so 
unanimous in maintaining that we do not 
perceive external objects immediately, f 
but by certain representative images of 
them called ideus,% that Malebranche 
might well think his system secure upon 
that quarter, and that the- only question to 
be determined was, in what subject those 
ideas are placed, whether in the human or 
in the divine mind ? 

But, says Mr Arnauld, those ideas are 
mere chimeras — fictions of philosophers ; 
there are no such beings in nature ; and, 
therefore, it is to no purpose to inquire 
whether they are in the divine or in the hu- 
man mind. The only true and real ideas 
are our perceptions, which§ are acknow- 
ledged by all philosophers, and by Male- 
branche himself, to be acts or modifications 
of our own minds. He does not say that 
the fictitious ideas were a fiction of Male- 
branche- He acknowledges that they had 
been very generally maintained by the 
scholastic philosophers, j| and points out, 
very judiciously, the prejudices that had 
led them into the belief of such ideas. 

Of all the powers of our mind, the 

• Arnauld did not allow that perceptions and 
ideas are really or numerically distinguished — i e., as 
one thing from another thing ; not even that tney 
are modally distinguished— i. e, as a thing from its 
mode. He maintained that they are really identical, 
and only rationally discriminated as viewed in dif- 
ferent relations ; the indivisib e mental modification 
being called a perception, by reference to the mind or 
thinking subject— an idea, by reference to the mediate 
object or thing thought. Arnauld everywhere avows 
that he denies ideas only as existences distinct Iroin 
the act itself of perception. — bee Oeuvres. t. xxxvni. 
pp. 187, 198, 199, 339.— H. 

f Arnauld does not assert against Malebranche 
" that-we perceive external objects immediately"— that 
is, in themselves, and as existing. He was too accu. 
rate for this. By an immediate cognition, Reid 
means merely the negation of the intermediation of 
any third thing between the reality perceived and 
the percipient mind.— H. 

t Idea was not the word by which representative 
images, distinct from the percipient act, had been 
commonly called ; nor were philosophers at all unani- 
mous in the admission of such vicarious objects. — 
See Notes G, L, M, N, O, &c— H. 

$ That is, Perceptions, (the cognitive acts,) but not 
hlcas, (tbe immediate objects of those acts.) The latter 
were not acknowledged by Malebranche and all phi- 
losophers to be mere acts or modifications of our own 
minds. — H. 

|| But by a different name H. 



external senses are thought to be the 
best understood, and their objects are the 
most familiar. Hence we measure other 
powers by them, and transfer to other 
powers the language which properly be- 
longs to them. The objects of sense must 
be present to the sense, or within its 
sphere, in order to their being perceived. 
Hence, by analogy, we are led to say of 
everything when we think of it, that it is 
present to the mind, or in the mind. [194] 
But this presence is metaphorical, or ana- 
logical only ; and Arnauld calls it objec- 
tive presence, to distinguish it from that 
local presence which is required in objects 
that are perceived by sense. But both 
being called bv the same name, they are 
confounded together, and those things that 
be'.ong only to real or local presence, are 
attributed to the metaphorical. 

We are likewise accustomed to see objects 
by their images in a mirror, or in water ; 
and hence are led, by analogy, to think that 
objects may be presented to the memory or 
imagination in some similar manner, by 
images, which] philosopher have called ideas. 

By such prejudices and analogies, Arnauld 
conceives, men have been led to believe that 
the objects of memory and imagination 
must be presented to the mind by images 
or ideas ; and the philosophers have been 
more carried away by these prejudices than 
even the vulgar, because the use made of 
this theory was to explain and account for 
the various operations of the mind — a matter 
in which the vulgar take no concern. 

He thinks, however, that Des Cartes had 
got the better of these prejudices, and that 
he uses the word idea as signifying the same 
thing with perception,* and is, therefore, 
surprised that a disciple of Des Cartes, and 
one who was so great an admirer of him as 
Malebranche was, should be carrh d away 
by them. It is strange, indeed, that the 
two most eminent disciples of Des Cartes 
and his contemporaries should differ eo 
essentially with regard to his doctrine con- 
cerning ideas, -f- 

I shall not attempt to give the reader an 
account of the continuation of this contro- 
versy between those two acute philosophers, 
in the subsequent defences and replies ; be- 
cause I have not access to see them. After 
much reasoning, and some animosity, each 



* I am convinced that in this interpretation of Des 
Cartes' doctrine, Arnauld is right ; for Des Cartes 
defines mental ideas — those, to wit, of which we are 
conscious — to he " Coyitationcs prout sunt tanquam 
imagines — that is, tnoughts considered in their repre- 
sentative capacity ; nor is there any passage to be found 
in the writings ot this philosopher, which, if properly 
understood, warrants the conclusion, that, by ideas in 
the mind, he meant aught distinct from the cognitive 
act. The double use of the term idea by Des Cartes 
has, however, led Reid and others into a miscon. 
ception on this point. See Note N. — H. 

t Reid's own doctrine is far more ambiguous. — H. 

[193, 1.94] 



hap. xiii.] OF THE SENTIMENTS OF ANTHONY ARNAULD. 297 



continued in his own opinion, and left his 
antagonist where he found him. [195] 
Malebran die's opinion of our seeing all 
things in God, soon died away of itself ; and 
Arnauld's notion of ideas seems to have 
been less regarded than it deserved, by the 
philosophers that came after him ;* per- 
haps for this reason, among others, that it 
seemed to be, in some sort, given up by 
himself, in his attempting to reconcile it to 
the common doctrine concerning ideas. 

From the account I have given, one 
would be apt to conclude that Arnauld 
totally denied the existence of ideas, in the 
philosophical sense of that word, and that 
he adopted the notion of the vulgar, who 
acknowledge no object of perception but the 
external object. But he seems very un- 
willing to deviate so far from the common 
track, and, what he had given up with one 
hand, he takes back with the other. 

For, first. Having defined ideas to be the 
same thing with perceptions, he adds this 
qualification to his definition : — " I do not 
here consider whether there are other things 
that may be called ideas ; but it is certain 
there are ideas taken in this sense.*}" I 
believe, indeed, there is no philosopher who 
does not, on some occasions, use the word 
idea in this popular sense. 



* The opinion of Arnauld in regard to the nature 
of ideas was by no means overlooked by subsequent 
philosophers. It is found fully detailed in almost 
every systematic course or compend of philosoj>hy, 
which appeared for a long time after its first promul. 
gation, and in many. of these it is the doctrine. re- 
commended as the true. Arnauld's was indeed the 
opinion which latterly prevailed in the Cartesian 
school. From this it passed into other schools. Leib- 
nitz, like Arnauld, regarded Ideas, Notions, Repre- 
sentations, as mere modifications of the mind, (what 
Ly his disciples, were called material ideas, like the 
cerebral ideas of Des Cartes, are out ofthe quest ion,) 
and no cruder opinion than this has ever subse- 
quently found a footing in any of the German 
systems, 

" I don't know," says Mr Stewart, " of any author 
who, prior to Dr Keicl, has expressed himself on this 
subject with so much justness and precision as Father 
Burner, in the following passage of his Treatise on 
• First Truths :*— 

" ' If we confine ourselves to what is intelligible in 
our observations on ideas, we will say, they are nn. 
thing»but mere modifications of the mind as a think, 
ing heing. They are called ideas with regard to the 
object represented ; and perceptions with regard to 
the faculty representing. It is manifest that our 
ideas, considered in this sense, ate not more distin- 
guished than motion is from a body moved.' — (P. 
311, English Translation.)" — i 1< m. iii. Add. to vol. i. 
p. 10 

In this passage, Burner only repeats thedectrine of 
Arnauld, in Arnauld's own words. 

Dr Thomas Brown, on the other hand, has en- 
deavoured to shew that ths doctrine, (which he 
identifies with Reid's,) had been long the catholic 
opinion ; and that Keid, in his attack on the Ide.d 
system, only refuted what had been already ahn< st 
universally exploded. In this attempt he is, how- 
ever, singularly unfortunate; for, with the excep- 
tion of Crousaz, all the examples he- adduces to 
evince the prevalence of Arnauld's doctrine are only 
so many mistakes, so many instances, in fact, which 
might be alleged in confirmation of the very opposite 
conclusion. See Edinburgh Review, vol. Iii., p. 181- 

iy6.-H. 

f See following note— H. 
[195, 19(3] 



Secondly, He supports this popular sense 
of the word by the authority of Des Cartes, 
who, in his demonstration of the existence 
of God, from the idea of him in our minds, 
defines an idea thus : — " By the word idea, 
I understand that form of any thought, by 
the immediate perception of which I am 
conscious of that thought ; so that I can ex- 
press nothing by words, with understanding, 
without being certain that there is in my mind 
the idea of that which is expressed by the 
words." This definition seems, indeed, to 
be of the same import with that which is 
given by Arnauld. But Des Cartes adds 
a qualification to it, which Arnauld, in 
quoting it, omits ; and which shews that 
Des Cartes meant to limit his definition to 
the idea then treated of — that is, to the idea 
of the Deity ; and that there are other ideas 
to which this definition does not apply. [ 1 96] 
For he adds : — " And thus I give the name 
of idea, not solely to the images painted in 
the phantasy ; nay, in this place, I do not 
at all give the name of ideas to those 
images, in so far as they are painted in the 
corporeal phantasy that is in some part of 
the brain, but only in so far as they inform 
the mind, turning its attention to that part 
of the brain."* 

Thirdly, Arnauld has employed the whole 
of his sixth chapter, to shew that these ways 
of speaking, common among philosophers — 
to wit, that we perceive not things imme- 
diately ; that it is their ideas that are the 
immediate objects of our thoughts; that it is 
in the idea of everything that s .we perceive i s 
properties — are not to be rejected, but are 
true when rightly understood. He labours 
to reconcile these expressions to his own 
definition of ideas, by observing, that every 
perception and every thought is necessarily 
conscious of itself, and reflects upon itself ; 
and that, by this consciousness and reflec- 
tion, it is its own immediate object. Whence 
he infers, that the idea — that is, the percep- 
tion — is the immediate object of perception. 

This looks like a weak attempt to recon- 
cile two inconsistent doctrines by one who 
wishes to hold both.*f- It is true, that con- 
sciousness always goes along with percep- 
tion; but they are different operations of 
the mind, and they have their different 
objects. Consciousness is not perception, 
nor is the object of consciousness the object 
of percel tion. J The same may be sa d of 

* Des Cartes here refers to the other meaning which 
he gives to the term idea — that is, to denote the 
material motion, the organic affection of the biain, 
of which the mind is not conscious. On Reid's mis- 
apprehension of the Cartesian doctrine touching this 
matter, see Note N — H 

-f Arnauld's attempt is ne ther weak nor inconsist. 
ent. He had, in tact, a clearer view of the condi- 
tions of the problem than Reid himself, who has, in 
fact, confound;, d two opposite doctrines. See Note C. 
— H. 

% On Reid's error in reducing consciousness to a 
fpecial faculty, see Note H H. 



293 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[_ESSAY II. 



every operation of mind that has an object. 
Thus, injury is the object of resentment. 
When I resent an injury, I am conscious 
of my resentment — that is, my resentment 
is the immediate and the only object of my 
consciousness ; but it would be absurd to 
infer from this, that my resentment is the 
immediate object of my resentment. [ 1 97 ] 
Upon the whole, if Arnauld — in conse- 
quence of his doctrine, that ideas, taken 
for representative images of external ob- 
jects, are a mere fiction of the philosophers 
— had rejected boldly the doctrine of Des 
Cartes, as well as of the other philosophers, 
concerning those fictitious beings, and all 
the ways of speaking that imply their ex- 
istence, I should have thought him more 
consistent with himself, and his doctrine 
concerning ideas more rational and more 
intelligible than that of any other author of 
my acquaintance who has treated of the 
subject.* 



CHAPTER XIV. 

REFLECTIONS ON THE COMMON THEORY OF 
IDEAS. 

After so long a detail of the sentiments 
of philosophers, ancient and modern, con- 
cerning ideas, it may seem presumptuous 
to call in question their existence. But no 
philosophical opinion, however ancient, 
however generally received, ought to rest 
upon authority. There is no presumption 
in requiring evidence for it, or in regulat- 
ing our belief by the evidence we can find. 

To prevent mistakes, the reader must 
again be reminded, that if by ideas are 
meant only the acts or operations of our 
minds in perceiving, remembering, or ima- 
gining objects, I am far from calling in 
question the existence of those acts ; we 
are conscious of them every day and every 
hour of life ; and I believe no man of a 
sound mind ever doubted of the real exist- 
ence of the operations of mind, of which he 
is conscious. Nor is it to be doubted that, 
by the faculties which God has given us, 
we can conceive things that are absent, as 
well as perceive those that are within the 
reach of our senses ; and that such concep- 
tions may be more or less distinct, and 



* Reid s discontent with Arnauld <s opinion — an 
opinio.i which is stated with great perspicuity by its 
author— may be used as an argum nt to shew that his 
own doctrine is, however ambiguous, that of intui- 
tive or immediate perception. (See NoteC.) Arnauld's 
theory is identical with the finer form* of representa- 
tive or mediate perception, and the difficulties of that 
doctrine were not overlooked by his great antagonist. 
Arnauld well objected that, when we see a horse, ac- 
cording to Malebranche, what we see is in reality 
God, himself; but Malebranche well rejoined, that, 
when we see a horse, according to Arnauld, what we 
-see is, in reality, only a modification of ourselves.— H. 



more or less lively and strong. We have 
reason to ascribe to the all-knowing and 
all-perfect Being distinct conceptions of all 
things existent and possible, and of all their 
relations ; and if these conceptions are called 
his eternal ideas, there ought to be no dis- 
pute among philosophers about a word. 
[198] The ideas, of whose existence I 
require the proof, are not the operations of 
any mind, but supposed objects of those 
operations. They are not perception, re- 
membrance, or conception, but things that 
are said to be perceived, or remembered, or 
imagined. 

Nor do I dispute the existence of what 
the vulgar call the objects of perception. 
These, by all who acknowledge their exist- 
ence, are called real things, not ideas. But 
philosophers maintain that, besides these, 
there are immediate objects of perception 
in the mind itself : that, for instance, we 
do not see the sun immediately, but an 
idea ; or, as Mr Hume calls it, an impres- 
sion in our own minds. This idea is said 
to be the image, the resemblance, the re- 
presentative of the «sun, if there be a sun. 
It is from the existence of the idea that we 
must infer the existence of the sun. But 
the idea, being immediately perceived, there 
can be no doubt, as philosophers think, of 
its existence. 

In like manner, when I remember, or 
when I imagine anything, all men acknow- 
ledge that there must be something that is 
remembered, or that is imagined ; that is, 
some object of those operations. The 
object remembered must be something that 
did exist in time past : the object imagined 
may be something that never existed.* 
But, say the philosophers, besides these 
objects which all men acknowledge, there 
is a more immediate object which really 
exists in the mind at the same time we 
remember or imagine. This object is an 
idea or image of the thing remembered or 
imagined. 

The Jirst reflection I would make on this 
philosophical opinion is, that it is directly 
contrary to the universal sense of men who 
have not been instructed in philosophy. 
When we see the sun or moon, we have no 
doubt that the very objects which we im- 
mediately see are very far distant from us, 
and from one another. We have not the 
least doubt that this is the sun and moon 
which God created some thousands of years 
ago, and which have continued to perform 
their revolutions in the heavens ever since. 
[199] But how are we astonished when 
the philosopher informs us that we are mis- 
taken in all this ; that the sun and moon 
which we see are not, as we imagine, many 
miles distant from us, and from each other, 



« See Note B— H 



[197-199] 



chap, xiv.] REFLECTIONS ON THE THEORY OF IDEAS. 



299 



but that they are in our own mind ; that 
they had no existence before we saw them, 
and will have none when we cease to per- 
ceive and to think of them ; because the 
objects we perceive are only ideas in our 
own minds, which can have no existence a 
moment longer than we think of them !* 

If a plain man, uninstructed in philoso- 
phy, has faith to receive these mysteries, 
how great must be his astonishment ! He 
is brought into a new world, where every- 
thing he sees, tastes, or touches, is an idea 
— a fleeting kind of being which he can con- 
jure into existence, or can annihilate in the 
twinkling of an eye. 

After his mind is somewhat composed, it 
will be natural for him to ask his philoso- 
phical instructor, Pray, sir, are there then 
no substantial and permanent beings called 
the sun and moon, which continue to exist 
whether we think of them or not ? 

Here the philosophers differ. Mr Locke, 
and those that were before him, will answer 
to this question, that it is very true there 
are substantial and permanent beings called 
the sun and moon ; but they never appear 
to us in their own person, but by their re- 
presentatives, the ideas in our own minds, 
and we know nothing of them but what we 
can gather from those ideas. 

Bishop Berkeley and Mr Hume would 
give a different answer to the question pro- 
posed. They would assure the querist that 
it is a vulgar error, a mere prejudice of the 
ignorant and unlearned, to think that there 
are any permanent and substantial beings 
called the sun and moon ; that the heavenly 
bodies, our own bodies, and all bodies what- 
soever, are nothing but ideas in our minds ; 
and that there can be nothing like the ideas 
of one mind, but the ideas of another mind. 
[200] There is nothing in nature but 
minds and ideas, says the Bishop; — nay, 
says Mr Hume, there is nothing in nature 
but ideas only ; for what we call a mind is 
nothing but a train of ideas connected by 
certain relations between themselves. 

In this representation of the theory of 
ideas, there is nothing exaggerated or mis- 
represented^ far as I am able to judge ; 
and surely nothing farther is necessary to 
shew that, to the uninstructed in philoso- 
phy, it must appear extravagant and vision- 
ary, and most contrary to the dictates of 
common understanding. 

There is the less need of any farther 
proof of this, that it is very amply acknow- 



* Whether Reid himself do not virtually hold thi s 
last opinion, see Note C. At any rate, it 'is very in- 
correct to say ihat the sim, moon, &c, are, or can be. 
perceived. by us as existent, aid in their real dis- 
tance in the heavens ; all that we can be cognisant 
of (supposing that we are immediately percipient of 
the non-ego) is i he rays of .light emanating from them, 
ahd in. contact and relation with our organ of sight. 
— H. 

[200,201] 



ledged by Mr Hume in his Essay on the 
Academical or Sceptical Philosophy. " It 
seems evident," says he, " that men are car- 
ried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, 
to repose faith in their senses ; and that, 
without any reasoning, or even almost be- 
fore the use of reason, we always suppose an 
external universe, which depends not on 
our perception, but would exist though we 
and every sensible creature were absent or 
annihilated. Even the animal creation are 
governed by a like opinion, and preserve this 
belief of external objects in all their thoughts, 
designs, and actions.'' 

" It seems also evident that, whenlmen 
follow this blind and powerful instinct of 
nature, they always suppose the very im- 
ages presented by the senses to be the ex- 
ternal objects, and never entertain any 
suspicion that the one are nothing but re- 
presentations of the other. This very table 
which we see white, and feel hard, is be- 
lieved to exist independent of our percep- 
tion, and to be something external to the 
mind which perceives it ; our presence be- 
stows not being upon it ; our absence anni- 
hilates it not : it preserves its existence 
uniform and entire, independent of the situ- 
ation of intelligent beings who perceive or 
contemplate it. [201] 

" But this universal and primary notion 
of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest 
philosophy, which teaches us that nothing 
can ever be present to the mind, but an 
image or perception ; and that the senses 
are only the inlets through which these 
images are received, without being ever 
able to produce any immediate intercourse 
between the mind and the object." 

It is therefore acknowledged by this phi- 
losopher, to be a natural instinct or pre- 
possession, an universal and primary opinion 
of all men, a primary instinct of nature, that 
the objects which we immediately perceive 
by our senses, are not images in our minds, 
but external objects, and that their exist- 
ence is independent of us and our percep- 
tion. 

In this acknowledgment, Mr Hume in- 
deed seems to me more generous, and even 
more ingenuous than Bishop Berkeley, who 
would persuade us that his opinion does 
not oppose the vulgar opinion, but only that 
of the philosophers ; and that the external 
existence of a material world is a philoso- 
phical hypothesis, and not the natural dic- 
tate of our perceptive powers. The Bishop 
shews a timidity of engaging such an adver- 
sary, as a primary and universal opinion of 
all men. He is rather fond to court its pa- 
tronage. But the philosopher intrepidly gives 
a defiance to this /antagonist, and seems to 
glory in a conflict that was worthy of his arm. 
Optat aprum aut fulvnm descendere monte 
leonem. After all, I suspect that a philo- 



300 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL PO\¥ERS. 



[essay II. 



sopher who wages war with this adversary, 
will find himself in the same condition as a 
mathematician who should undertake to 
demonstrate that there is no truth in the 
axioms of mathematics. 

A seco/W reflection upon this subject is — 
that the authors who have treated of ideas, 
have generally taken their existence for 
granted, as a thing that could not be called 
in question ; and such arguments as they 
have mentioned incidentally, in order to 
prove it, seem too weak to support the con- 
clusion. [202] 

Mr Locke, in the introduction to his 
Essay, tells us, that he uses the word idea 
to signify whatever is the immediate object 
of thought ; and then adds, " I presume it 
will be easily granted me that there are 
such ideas in men's minds ; every one is 
conscious of them in himself; and men's 
words and actions will satisfy him that they 
are in others." I am indeed conscious of 
perceiving, remembering, imagining; but 
that the objects of these operations are 
images in my mind, I am not conscious. 
I am satisfied, by men's words and actions, 
that they often perceive the same objects 
which I perceive, which could not be, if 
those objects were ideas in their own minds. 

Mr Norris is the only author I have met 
with, who professedly puts the question, 
Whether material things can be perceived 
by us immediately ? He has offered four 
arguments to shew that they cannot. First, 
" Material objects are without the mind, 
and therefore there can be no union between 
the object and the percipient." Answer, 
This argument is lame, until it is shewn to 
be necessary that in perception there should 
be a union between the object and the per- 
cipient. Second, " Material objects are 
disproportioned to the mind, and removed 
from it by the whole diameter of Being." 
This argument I cannot answer, because I 
do not understand it.* Third, " Because, 

*This confession would, of itself, prove how super, 
ficially Reid was versed in the literature of philo- 
sophy. N orris's. second argument is only the state- 
ment of a principle generally assumed by philosophers 
— that the relation of knowledge infers a correspond- 
ence of nature between the subject knowing, and the 
object known, (his principle has, perhaps, exerted 
a more extensive influence on speculation than any 
other ; and yet it has not been proved, and is incapable 
of proof— nay, is contradicted by the evidence of 
consciousness" itself. To trace the influence of this 
assumption would be, in fact, in a certain sort,- to 
write the history of philosophy ; for, though this in- 
fluence has never yet been historically devel ped, it 
would be easy to shew that the belief, explicit 
or implicit, that what knows and what is imme- 
diately known must be of an analogous nature, lies 
at the root of almost every theory of cognition, from 
the very earliest to the very latest speculations. In 
the more ancient philosophy of Greece, three philo- 
sophers (Anaxagoras, Heraciitus, and Alcmaenn) are 
found, who professed the opposite doctrine— that the 
condition of knowledge lies in the contrariety, in the 
natural antithesis, of subject and object. Aristotle, 
likewise, in his treatise On the Soul, expressly con- 
demns the prevalent opinion, that the similar is only 



if material objects were immediate objects 
of perception, there could be no physical 
science— things necessary and immuable 
being the only object of science." Answer, 
Although things necessary and immutable 
be not the immediate objects of perception, 
they may be immediate objects of other 
powers of the mind. Fourth, " If material 
things were perceived by themselves, they 
would be a true light to our minds, as being 
the intelligible form of our understandings, 
and consequently perfective of them, and 
indeed superior to them." If I comprehend 
anything of this mysterious argument, it 
follows from it, that the Deity perceives 
nothing at all, because nothing can be supe- 
rior to his understanding, or perfective of 
it. [203] 

There is an argument which is hinted 
at by Malebranche, and by several other 
authors, which deserves to be more seriously 
considered. As I find it most clearly ex- 
pressed and most fully urged by Dr Samuel 
Clarke, I shall give it in his words, in his 
second reply to Leibnitz, § 4. " The soul, 
without being present to the images of the 
things perceived, could not possibly perceive 
them. A. living substance can only there 
perceive, where it is present, either to the 



cognisable by the similar ; but, in his Nicomachian 
Ethics, he reverts t<> the doctrine which, in the for- 
mer work, he had rejected. With these exceptions, 
no principle, since the time of Empedocles, by whom 
it seems first to have been explicitly announced, has 
been more universally received, than this— that the 
relation of knowledge infers an analog// of existence. 
This analogy may be of two degrees. What knoivs, 
and tchat is knov:n, may be either similar or the 
same; and, i the principle itself be admitted, the 
latter alternative is the more philosophical. Without 
entering on details, I may here notice some of the 
more remarkable results of this principle, in both its 
degrees. The general principle, not, indeed, exclu. 
sively, but mainly, determined the admission of a 
representative perception, by disallowing the possibil- 
ity of any consciousness, or immediate knowledge of 
matter, by a nature so different from it as mind ; 
and, in its two degrees, it determined thevarions hy- 
potheses, by which it was attempted to explain the 
possibility of a representative or mediate perception 
of the external world. To this principle, in its 
lower potence— that what knows must be similar in 
nature to what is immediately known— we owe the 
intentional species of the Aristotelians, and the ideas 
of Malebrauche and Berkeley. From this principle, 
in its higher potence — that what knows must be 
identical in nature with what is immediately known 
— there flow the gnostic reasons of the Platonists, the 
pre-existing forms or species of Tbeophrastus and The. 
mistius, of Adelandus and Avicenna, the (mental) 
ideas of Des Cartes and Arnauld, the representations, 
sensual ideas, <yc. of Leibnitz and V\ olf, the phceno- 
mena of Kant, the states of Brown, and (shall we 
say ?; the vacillating doctrine of perception held by 
Heid himself. Mediately, this principle was the 
origin of many other famous theories :— of the hier- 
archical gradation ol souls or faculties of the Aristo- 
telians ; of the vehicular media of the t'iatonists; 
of the hypotheses of a common intellect of Alex- 
ander, Themistius, A'erroes, Cajetanus, and Zabar. 
ella ; ofthe vision in the deity of Malebranche: and of 
the (_ artesian and Leibnitzian doctrines of assistance 
and pre-established harmony. Finally, to this prin- 
ciple is to be ascribed the refusal of the evidence o. con- 
sciousness to the primary fact, the duality of its per- 
ception ; and the unitarian schemes of Absolute Iden- 
tity, Materialism, and Idealism, are the results — H. 



[202, 203] 



chap, xiv.] REFLECTIONS ON THE THEORY OF IDEAS. 



301 



things themselves, (as the omnipresent God 
is to the whole universe,) or to the images 
of things, as the soul is in its proper senso- 
rium." 

Sir Isaac Newton expresses the same 
sentiment, but with his usual reserve, in a 
query only. 

The ingenious Dr Porterfield, in his Essay 
concerning the motions of our eyes, adopts 
this opinion with more confidence. His 
words are : " How body acts upon mind, 
or mind upon body, I know not ; but this I 
am very certain of, that nothing can act, or 
be acted upon, where it is not ; and there- 
fore our mind can never perceive anything 
but its own proper modifications, and the 
various states of the sensorium, to which it 
is present : so that it is not the external 
sun and moon which are in the heavens, 
which our mind perceives, but only their 
image or representation impressed upon the 
sensorium. How the soul of a seeing man 
sees these images, or how it receives those 
ideas, from such agitations in the sensorium, 
I know not ; but I am sure it can never 
perceive the external bodies themselves, to 
which it is not present." 

These, indeed, are great authorities : but, 
in matters of philosophy, we must not be 
guided by authority, but by reason. Dr 
Clarke, in the place cited, mentions slightly, 
as the reason of his opinion, that " nothing 
can any more act, or be acted upon when 
it is not present, than it can be where it is 
not." [204] And again, in his third 
reply to Leibnitz, § 1 1 — " We are sure the 
soul cannot perceive what it is not present 
to, because nothing can act, or be acted 
upon, where it is not." The same reason 
we see is urged by Dr Porterfield. 

That nothing can act immediately where 
it is not, I think must be admitted : for I 
agree with Sir Isaac Newton, that power 
without substance is inconceivable. It is a 
consequence of this, that nothing can be 
acted upon immediately where the agent is 
not present : let this, therefore be granted. 
To make the reasoning conclusive, it is 
farther necessary, that, when we perceive 
objects, either they act upon us, or we act 
upon them. This does not appear self-evi- 
dent, nor have I ever met with any proof 
of it. I shall briefly offer the reasons why I 
think it ought not to be admitted. 

When we say that one being acts upon 
another, we mean that some power or force 
is exerted by the agent, which produces, or 
has a tendency to produce, a change in the 
thing acted upon. If this be the meaning 
of the phrase, as I conceive it is, there 
appears no reason for asserting that, in 
perception, either the object acts upon the 
mind, or the mind upon the object. 

An object, in being perceived, does not 
act at all. I perceive the walls of the room 
[20 i, 205] 



where I sit ; but they are perfectly inactive, 
and therefore act not upon the mind. To 
be perceived, is what logicians call an ex- 
ternal denomination, which implies neither 
action nor quality in the object perceived.* 
Nor could men ever have gone into this 
notion, that perception is owing to some 
action of the object upon the mind, were 
it not that we are so prone to form our 
notions of the mind from some similitude 
we conceive between it and body. Thought 
in the mind is conceived to have some 
analogy to motion in a body : and, as a body 
is put in motion, by being acted upon by 
some other body ; so we are apt to think the 
mind is made to perceive, by some impulse 
it receives from the object. But reasonings, 
drawn from such analogies, ought never to 
be trusted. [205] They are, indeed, the 
cause.-of most of our errors with regard to 
the mind. And we might as well conclude, 
that minds may be measured by feet and 
inches, or weighed by ounces and drachms, 
because bodies have those properties. -f- 

I see as little reason, in the second place, 
to believe that in perception the mind acts 
upon the object. To perceive an object is 
one thing, to act upon it is another ; nor is 
the last at all included in the first. To say 
that I act upon the wall by looking at it, is 
an abuse of language, and has no meaning. 
Logicians distinguish two kinds of opera- 
tions of mind : the first' kind produces no 
effect without the mind ; the last does. 
The first they call immanent acts, the se- 
cond transitive. All intellectual operations 
belong to the first class ; they produce no 
effect upon any external object. But, with- 
out having recourse to logical distinctions, 
every man of common sense knows, that to 



* This passage, among others that follow, afford 
the foundation of an argument, to prove that Reid 
is not original in his doctrine of Perception ; but 
that it was borrowed from the speculations of cert iin 
older philosophers, of which he was aware. See 
Note S.— H. 

f This reasoning, which is not original to Reld, 
(see Note S,) is not clearly or precisely expressed. 
In asserting that " an object, in being perceived, does 
not act at all," our author cannot mean that, it does 
not act upon the organ of sense ; for this would not 
only be absurd in itself, but in contradiction to his 
own doctrine—" it being," he says, " a law of our 
nature that we perceive not external objects un. 
less certain impressions be made on the nerves and 
brain." The assertion — " I perceive the walls of the 
room where 1 sit, -but they are perfectly inactive, 
and, therelore, act not on the mind," is equally in- 
correct in statement. Tlie walls of the-.room, strictly 
so called, assuredly do not act on the mind' or on the 
eye; but the walls of the room, in this sens , are, in 
fact, no object of (visual) perception, at all. What 
we see in this instance, and what we loosely call the 
walls of the room, is only the light reflected- from 
their surface in its relation to the organ of sight — i e., 
colour; but it cannot be affirmed that the rays of 
light do not act on and affect the retina, optic nerve, 
and brain. What Aristotle distinguished as the 
concommitants of sensation — as extension, motion, 
position, &c. — are, indeed, perceived without any 
relative passion" of thje sense. Bu>, whatever may 
be Reid's meaning, it is, at best, vague and inexpli- 
cit— H. 



302 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



think of an object, and to act upon it, are 
very different things. 

As we have, therefore, no evidence that, 
in perception, the mind acts upon the object, 
or the object upon the mind, but strong rea- 
sons to the contrary, Dr Clarke's argument 
against our perceiving external objects im- 
mediately falls to the ground. 

This notion, that, in perception, the object 
must be contiguous to the percipient, seems, 
with many other prejudices, to be borrowed 
from analogy. In all the external senses, 
there must, as has been before observed, be 
some impression made upon the organ of 
sense by the object, or by something coming 
from the object. An impression supposes 
contiguity. Hence we are led by analogy 
to conceive something similar in the opera- 
tions of the mind. Many philosophers re- 
solve almost every operation of mind into 
impressions and feelings, words manifestly 
borrowed from the sense of touch. And it 
is very natural to conceive contiguity neces- 
sary between that which makes the impres- 
sion, and that which receives it ; between 
that which feels, and that which is felt. [206] 
And though no philosopher will now pre- 
tend to justify such analogical reasoning as 
this, yet it has a powerful influence upon 
the judgment, while we contemplate the 
operations of our minds, only as they ap- 
pear through the deceitful medium of such 
analogical notions and expressions. * 

When we lay aside those analogies, and 
reflect attentively upon our perception of 
the objects of sense, we must acknowledge 
that, though we are conscious of perceiving 
objects, we are altogether ignorant how it 
is brought about ; and know as little how 
we perceive objects as how we were made. 
And, if we should admit an image in the 
mind, or contiguous to it, we know as 
little how perception may be produced by 
this image as by the most distant object. 
Why, therefore, should we be led, by a 
theory which is neither grounded on evi- 
dence, nor, if admitted, can explain any one 
phenomenon of perception, to reject the 
natural and immediate dictates of those 
perceptive powers, to which, in the conduct 
of life, we find a necessity of yielding im- 
plicit submission ? 

There remains only one other argument 
that I have been able to find urged against 
our perceiving external objects immediately. 
It is proposed by Mr Hume, who, in the 
essay already quoted, after acknowledging 
that it is an universal and primary opi- 
nion of all men, that we perceive external 

* It is self-evident that, if a thing is to be an ob- 
ject immediately known, it must be known as it 
exists. Now, a body must exist in some definite 
part of space — in a certain place; it cannot, there- 
fore, be immediately known as existing, except it be 
known in its place. But this supposes the mind to 
be immediately present to it in space.— H. 



objects immediately, subjoins what fol- 
lows : — 

" But this universal and primary opinion 
of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest 
philosophy, which teaches us that nothing 
can ever be present to the mind but an 
image or perception ; and that the senses 
are only the inlets through which these 
images are received, without being ever 
able to produce any immediate intercourse 
between the mind and the object. The 
table, which we see, seems to diminish as 
we remove farther from it : but the real 
table, which exists independent of us, suf- 
fers no alteration. ['207] It was, therefore, 
nothing but its image which was present to 
the mind. These are the obvious dictates of 
reason ; and no man who reflects ever doubted 
that the existences which we consider, when 
we say this huvse, and that tree, are nothing 
but perceptions in the mind, and fleeting 
copies and representations of other exist- 
ences, which remain uniform and independ- 
ent. So far, then, we are necessitated, by 
reasoning, to depart from the primary in- 
stincts of nature, and to embrace a new 
system with regard to the evidence of our 
senses." 

We have here a remarkable conflict be- 
tween two contradictory opinions, wherein 
all mankind are engaged. On the one side 
stand all the vulgar, who are unpractised in 
philosophical reseaches, and guided by the 
uncorrupted primary instincts of nature. 
On the other side stand all the philoso- 
phers, ancient and modern ; every man, 
without exception, who reflects. In this 
division, to my great humiliation, I find 
myself classed with the vulgar. 

The passage now quoted is all I have 
found in Mr Hume's writings upon this 
point : and, indeed, there is more reason- 
ing in it than I have found in any other 
author ; I shall, therefore, examine it min- 
utely. 

First, He tells us, that " this universal 
and primary opinion of all men is soon 
destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which 
teaches us that nothing can ever be pre- 
sent to the mind but an image or percep- 
tion." 

The phrase of being present to the mind 
has some obscurity ; but I conceive he 
means being an immediate object of thought ; 
an immediate object, for instance, of per- 
ception, of memory, or of imagination. If 
this be the meaning, (and it is the only 
pertinent one I can think of,) there is no 
more in this passage but an assertion of the 
proposition to be proved, and an assertion 
that philosophy teaches it. If this be so, 
I beg leave to dissent from philosophy till 
she gives me reason for what she teaches. 
[208] For, though common sense and my 
external senses demand my assent to their 
[-206-208] 



chap, xiv.] REFLECTIONS ON THE THEORY OF IDEAS. 



303 



dictates upon their own authority, yet phi- 
losophy is not entitled to this privilege. 
But, that I may not dissent from so grave 
a personage without giving a reason, I give 
this as the reason of my dissent : — 1 see 
the sun when he shines ; I remember the 
battle of Culloden ;* and neither of these 
objects is an image or perception. 

He tells us, in the next place, " That the 
senses are only the inlets through which 
these images are received." 

I know that Aristotle and the schoolmen 
taught that images or species flow from ob- 
jects, and are let in by the senses, and strike 
upon the mind ; but this has been so effectu- 
ally refuted by Des Cartes, by Malebranche, 
and many others, that nobody now pretends 
to defend it. Reasonable men consider it 
as one of the most unintelligible and un- 
meaning parts of the ancient system. To 
what cause is it owing that modern philo- 
sophers are so prone to fall back into this 
hypothesis, as if they really believed it ? 
For, of this proneness I could give many 
instances besides this of Mr Hume ; and I 
take the cause to be, that images in the 
mind, and images let in by the senses, are 
so nearly allied, and so strictly connected, 
that they must stand or fall together. The 
old system consistently maintained both : 
but the new system has rejected the doc- 
trine of images let in by the senses, hold- 
ing, nevertheless, that there are images in 
the mind ; and, having made this unnatural 
divorce of two doctrines which ought not 
to be put asunder, that which they have 
retained often leads them back involun- 
tarily to that which they have rejected. 

Mr Hume surely did not seriously be- 
lieve that an image of sound is let in by the 
ear, an image of smell by the nose, an 
image of hardness and softness, of solidity 
and resistance, by the touch. For, besides 
the absurdity of the thing, which has often 
been shewn, Mr Hume, and all modern 
philosophers, maintain that the images which 
are the immediate objects of perception 
have no existence when they are not per- 
ceived ; whereas, if they were let in by the 
senses, they must be, before they are per- 
ceived, and have a separate existence. [209] 
He tell us, farther, that philosophy teaches 
that the senses are unable to produce any 
immediate intercourse between the mind 
and the object. Here, I still require the 
reasons that philosophy gives for this ; for, 
to my apprehension, I immediately per- 
ceive external objects, and this, I conceive 
is the immediate intercourse here meant. 
Hitherto I see nothing that can be called 



* The sun can be no immediate object of conscious- 
) ess in perception, but only certain rays in connec- 
tion with the eye. The battle of Culloden can be no 
immediate object of consciousness in recollection, but 
only a certain representation by the mind itself.— H. 



an argument. Perhaps it was intended 
only for illustration. The argument, the 
only argument, follows : — 

The table which we see, seems to dimin- 
ish as we remove farther from it ; but the 
real table, which exists independent of us 
suffers no alteration. It was, therefore, 
nothing but its image which was presented 
to the mind. These are the obvious dic- 
tates of reason. 

To judge of the strength of this argu- 
ment, it is necessary to attend to a distinc- 
tion which is familiar to those who are con- 
versant in the mathematical sciences — I 
mean the distinction between real and ap- 
parent magnitude. The real magnitude of 
a line is measured by some known measure 
of length — as inches, feet, or miles : the 
real magnitude of a surface or solid, by 
known measures of surface or of capacity. 
This magnitude is an object of touch only, 
and not of sight ; nor could we even have 
had any conception of it, without the sense 
of touch ; and Bishop Berkeley, on that 
account, calls it tangible magnitude * 

Apparent magnitude is measured by the 
angle which an object subtends at the eye. 
Supposing two right lines drawn from the 
eye to the extremities of the object making 
an angle, of which the object is the sub- 
tense, the apparent magnitude is measured 
by this angle. [210] This apparent mag- 
nitude is an object of sight, and not of 
touch. Bishop Berkeley calls it visible 
magnitude. 

If it is asked what is the apparent mag- 
nitude of the sun's diameter, the answer 
is, that it is about thirty-one minutes of a 
degree. But, if it is asked what is the 
real magnitude of the sun's diameter, the 
answer must be, so many thousand miles, 
or so many diameters of the earth. From 
which it is evident that real magnitude, and 
apparent magnitude, are things of a different 
nature, though the name of magnitude is 
given to both. The first has three dimen- 
sions, the last only two ; the first is mea- 
sured by a line, the last by an angle. 

From what has been said, it is evident 
that the real magnitude of a body must 
continue unchanged, while the body is 
unchanged. This we grant. But is it 
likewise evident, that the apparent mag- 

* The doctrine of Reid — that real magnitude or 
extension .is the object of touch, and of touch alone— 
is altogether untenable. For, in the first place, mag- 
nitude appears greater or less in proportion to the 
different size of the tactile organ in different subjects ; 
thus, an apple is larger to the hand of a child than to 
the hand of an adult. Touch, therefore, can, at best, 
afford a knowledge of the relation of magnitudes, in 
proportion to the organ of this or that individual. 
Kut, in the second place, even in the same individual, 
the same object appears greater or less, according as 
it is w.uched by one part of the body or by another. 
On this subject, see Weber's " Annotationes de 
Pulsu, Resorptione, Auditu et Tactu ;" J.eipsic, 
18W.-H. 



[209, 210] 



304 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II 



nitude must continue the same while the 
body is unchanged ? So far otherwise, 
that every man who knows anything of 
mathematics can easily demonstrate, that 
the same individual object, remaining in 
the same place, and unchanged, must neces- 
sarily vary in its apparent magnitude, ac- 
cording as the point from which it is seen 
is more or less distant ; and that its appa- 
rent length or breadth will be nearly in a 
reciprocal proportion to the distance of the 
spectator. This is as certain as the princi- 
ples of geometry.* 

We must likewise attend to this — that, 
though the real magnitude of a body is not 
originally an object of sight, but of touch, 
yet we learn by experience to judge of the 
real magnitude in many cases by sight. 
We learn by experience to judge of the 
distance of a body from the eye within cer- 
tain limits ; and, from its distance and ap- 
parent magnitude taken together, we learn 
to judge of its real magnitude. [211] 

And this kind of judgment, by being 
repeated every hour and almost every 
minute of our lives, becomes, when we are 
grown up, so ready and so habitual, that it 
very much resembles the original perceptions 
of our senses, and may not improperly be 
called acquired, pei ception. 

Whether we call it judgment or acquired 
perception is a verbal difference. But it is 
evident that, by means of it, we often dis- 
cover by one sense things which are pro- 
perly and naturally the objects of another. 
Thus I can say, without impropriety, I hear 
a drum, I hear a great bell, or I hear a 
small bell; though it is certain that the 
figure or size of the sounding body is not 
originally an object of hearing, 'in like 
manner, we learn by experience how a 
body of such a real magnitude and at such 
a distance appears to the eve. But neither 
its real magnitude, nor its distance from 
the eye, are properly objects of sight, any 
more than the form of a drum or the size 
of a bell, are properly objects of hearing. 

If these things be considered, it will ap- 
pear that Mr Hume's argument hath no 
force to support his conclusion — nay, that it 
leads to a contrary conclusion. The argu- 
ment is this : the table we see seems to di- 
minish as we remove farther from it ; that 
is, its apparent magnitude is diminished; 
but the real table suffers no alteration — to 
wit, in its real magnitude ; therefore, it is 



* The whole confusion and difficulty in this mar. 
ter arises from not determining what is the true object 
in visual .perception. This is not any distant thing, 
but merely the rays of light in immediate relation to 
the organ. We therefore, see a different object at 
every movement, by which a different complement 
of rays is reflected to the eye. The things from which 
these rays are reflected are not, in truth, perceived at 
all ; and to conceive tjiem as objects of perceptiou is 
therefore erroneous, and productive of error. — H. 



not the real table we see. I admit both the 
premises in this syllogism, but I deny the 
conclusion. The syllogism has what the 
logicians call two middle terms : apparent 
magnitude is the middle term in the first 
premise ; real magnitude in the second. 
Therefore, according to the rules of logic, 
the conclusion is not justly drawn from the 
premises ; but, laying aside the rules of 
logic, let us examine it by the light of com- 
mon sense. 

Let us suppose, for a moment, that it is 
the real table we. see : Must not this real 
table seem to diminish as we remove farther 
from it ? It is demonstrable that it must. 
How then can this apparent diminution be an 
argument that it is not the real table ? [212] 
When that which must happen to the real 
table, as we remove farther from it, does 
actually happen to the table we see, it is ab- 
surd to conclude from this, that it is not the 
real table we see.* It is evident, therefore, 
that this ingenious author has imposed upon 
himself by confounding real magnitude with 
apparent magnitude, and that his argument 
is a mere sophism. 

I observed that Mr Hume's argument 
not only has no strength to support his con- 
clusion, but that it leads to the contrary con- 
clusion — to wit, that it is the real table we 
see ;* for this plain reason, that the table 
we see has precisely that apparent magni- 
tude which it is demonstrable the real table 
must have when placed at that distance. 

This argument is made much stronger by 
considering that the real table may be placed 
successively at a thousand different dis- 
tances, and, in every distance, in a thousand 
different positions ; and it can be deter- 
mined demonstratively, by the rules of 
geometry and perspective, what must be its 
apparent magnitude and apparent figure, in 
each of those distances and positions. Let 
the table be placed successively in as many 
of those different distances and different po- 
sitions as you will, or in them all ; open 
your eyes and you shall see a table pre- 
cisely of that apparent magnitude, and that 
apparent figure, which the real table must 
have in that distance and in that position. 
Is not this a strong argument that it is the 
real table you see ?* 

In a word, the appearance of a visible 
object is infinitely diversified, according to 
its distance and position. The visible ap- 
pearances are innumerable, when we con- 
fine ourselves to one object, and they are 
multiplied according to the variety of ob- 
jects- Those appearances have been mat- 
ter of speculation to ingenious men, at least 
since the time of Euclid. They have ac- 
counted for all this variety, on the suppo- 
sition that the objects we see are external, 



See last note.— H. 



[211, 212] 



chap, xiv.] REFLECTIONS ON THE THEORY OF IDEAS. 



305 



and not in the mind itself. [213] The rules 
they have demonstrated about the various 
projections of the sphere, about the appear- 
ances of the planets in their progressions, 
stations, and retrogradations, and all the 
rules of perspective, are built on the suppo- 
sition that the objects of sight are external. 
They can each of them be tried in thousands 
of instances. In many arts and professions, 
innumerable trials are daily made ; nor 
were they ever found to fail in a single in- 
stance. Shall we say that a false supposi- 
tion, invented by the rude vulgar, has been 
so lucky in solving an infinite number of 
phaenomena of nature ? This, surely, would 
be a greater prodigy than philosophy ever 
exhibited : add to this, that, upon the con- 
trary hypothesis — to wit, that the objects of 
sight are internal — no account can be given 
of any one of those appearances, nor any 
physical cause assigned why a visible object 
should, in any one case, have one apparent 
figure and magnitude rather than another. 

Thus, I have considered every argument 
I have found advanced to prove the exist- 
ence of ideas, or images of external things, 
in the mind ; and, if no better arguments can 
be found, I cannot help thinking that the 
whole history of philosophy has never fur- 
nished an instance of an opinion so unani- 
mously entertained by philosophers upon so 
slight grounds. 

A third reflection I would make upon 
this subject is, that philosophers, notwith- 
standing their unanimity as to the existence 
of ideas,* hardly agree in any one thing 
else concerning them. If ideas be not a 
mere fiction, they must be, of all objects of 
human knowledge, the things we have best 
access to know, and to be acquainted with ; 
yef there is nothing about which men differ 
so much. 

Some have held them to be self-existent, 
others to be in the Divine mind, others in 
our own minds, and others in the brain or 
sensorium. I considered the hypothesis of 
images in the brain, in the fourth chapter 
of this essay. As to images in the mind, if 
anything more is meant by the image of an 
object in the mind than the thought of that 
object, I know not what it means. [214] 
The distinct conception of an object may, 
in a metaphorical or analogical sense, be 
called an image of it in the mind. But this 
image is only the conception of the object, 
and not the object conceived. It is an act 
of the mind, and not the object of that act.-f- 

Some philosophers will have our ideas, or 
a part of them, to be innate ; others will 
have them all to be adventitious : some de- 
rive them from the senses alone ; others 
from sensation and reflection : some think 



» This unanimity did, not exist.— H. 
t See Notes B and C — H. 
'213-215] 



they are fabricated by the mind itself; 
others that they are produced by externa 
objects ; others that they are the immediate 
operation of the Deity; others say, that 
impressions are the causes of ideas, and 
that the causes of impressions are unknown : 
some think that we have ideas only of ma- 
terial objects, but none of minds, of their 
operations, or of the relations of things ; 
others will have the immediate object of 
every thought to be "an idea : some think 
we have abstract ideas, and that by this 
chiefly we are distinguished from the brutes ; 
others maintain an abstract idea to be an 
absurdity, and that there can be no such 
thing : with some they are«the immediate ob- 
jects of thought, with others the only objects. 

A fourth reflection is, that ideas do not 
make any of the operations of the mind to 
be better understood, although it was pro- 
bably with that view that they have been 
first invented, and afterwards so generally 
received. 

We are at a loss to know how we per- 
ceive distant objects ; how we remember 
things past ; how we imagine things that 
have no existence. Ideas in the mind seem 
to account for all these operations : they are 
all by the means of ideas reduced to one 
operation — to a kind of feeling, or imme- 
diate perception of things present and in 
contact with the percipient ; and feeling is 
an operation so familiar that we think it 
needs no explication, but may serve to ex- 
plain other operations. [215] 

But this feeling, or immediate percep- 
tion, is as difficult to be comprehended as 
the things which we pretend to explain by 
it. Two things may be in contact without 
any feeling or perception ; there must 
therefore be in the percipient a power to 
feel or to perceive. How this power is pro- 
duced, and how it operates, is quite beyond 
the reach of our knowledge. As little can 
we know whether this power must be limited 
to things present, and in contact with us. 
Nor can any man pretend to prove that the 
Being who gave us the power to« perceive 
things present, may not give us the power 
to perceive things that are distant,* to re- 
member things past, and to conceive things 
that never existed. 

Some philosophers have endeavoured to 
make all our senses to be only different 
modifications of touch ;-}- a theory which 
serves only to confound things that are dif- 
ferent, and to perplex and darken things 
that are clear. The theory of ideas resembles 
this, by reducing all the operations of the 



* An immediate perception of things distant, is a 
contradiction in terms. — H. 

t It an immediate perception be supposed, it can 
only be rationally supposed of objects as in contact 
with the organs of sense. But, in this case, all the 
senses would, as Democritus held, be, in a certain 
sort, only modifications of touch.— H. 

X 



306 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay it. 



human understanding to the perception of 
ideas in our own minds. This power of 
perceiving ideas is as inexplicable as any of 
the powers explained by it : and the con- 
tiguity of the object contributes nothing at 
all to make it better understood ; because 
there appears no connection between con- 
tiguity and perception, but what is grounded 
on prejudices drawn from some imagined 
similitude between mind and body, and 
from the supposition that, in perception, 
the object acts upon the mind, or the mind 
upon the object. We have seen how this 
theory has led philosophers to confound 
those operations of mind, which experience 
teaches all men to be different, and teaches 
them to distinguish in common language ; 
and that it has led them to invent a lan- 
guage inconsistent with the principles upon 
which all language is grounded. 

The last reflection I shall make upon this 
theory, is — that the natural and necessary 
consequences of it furnish a just prejudice 
against it to every man who pays a due re- 
gard to the common sense of mankind. [216] 

Not to mention that it led the Pytha- 
goreans and Plato to imagine that we see 
only the shadows of external things, and 
not the things themselves,* and that it gave 
rise to the Peripatetic doctrine of sensible 
species, one of the greatest absurdities of 
that ancient system, let us only consider the 
fruits it has produced since it was new- 
modelled by Des Cartes. That great re- 
former in philosophy saw the absurdity of 
the doctrine of ideas coming from external 
objects, and refuted it effectually, after it 
had been received by philosophers forHhou- 
sands of years ; but he still retained ideas 
in the brain and in the mind.-j- Upon this 
foundation all our modern systems of the 
powers of the mind are built. And the tot- 
tering state of those fabrics, though built 
by skilful hands, may give a strong suspicion 
of the unsoundness of the foundation. 

It was this theory of ideas that led Des 
Cartes, and those that followed him, to think 
it necessary to prove, by philosophical argu- 
ments, the existence of material objects. 
And who does not see that philosophy must 
make a very ridiculous figure in the eyes of 
sensible men, while it is employed in muster- 
ing up metaphysical arguments, to prove 
that there is a sun and a moon, an earth and 
a sea ? Yet we find these truly great men, 
Des Cartes, Malebranche, Arnauld, and 
Locke, seriously employing themselves in 
this argument. % 

Surely their principles led them to think 



* See above, p. 262 col. b, note *— .H 

t See Note N.—H. 

% If Reid do not allow that we are i mmediately 
cognitive or conscious of the non-ego, his own doc 
trine of perception differs not from that of other 
philosophers in the necessity for this proof — H, 



that all men, from the beginning of the 
world, believed the existence of these things 
upon insufficient grounds, and to think that 
they would be able to place upon a more 
rational foundation this universal belief of 
mankind. But the misfortune is, that all 
the laboured arguments they have advanced, 
to prove the existence of those things we 
see and feel, are mere sophisms : Not one 
of them will bear examination. 

I might mention several paradoxes, which 
Mr Locke, though by no means fond of para- 
doxes, was led into by this theory of ideas. 
[217] Such as, that the secondary qualities 
of body are no qualities of body at all, but 
sensations of the mind : That the primary 
qualities of body are resemblances of our 
sensations : That we have no notion of dur- 
ation, but from the succession of ideas in 
our minds : That personal identity consists 
in consciousness ; so that the same indivi- 
dual thinking being may make two or three 
different persons, and several different think- 
ing beings make one person : That judg- 
ment is nothing but a perception oi the 
agreement or disagreement of our ideas. 
Most of these paradoxes I shall have oc- 
casion to examine. 

However, all these consequences of the 
doctrine of ideas were tolerable, compared 
with those which came afterwards to be dis- 
covered by Berkeley and Hume : — That 
there is no material world : No abstract 
ideas or notions : That the mind is only a 
train of related impressions and ideas, with- 
out any subject on which they may be im- 
pressed: That there is neither space nor 
time, body nor mind, but impressions and 
ideas only : And, to sum up all, That there 
is no probability, even in demonstration it- 
self, nor any one proposition more probable 
than its contrary. 

These are the noble fruits which have 
grown upon this theory of ideas, since it 
began to be cultivated by skilful hands. It 
is no wonder that sensible men should be 
disgusted at philosophy, when such wild 
and shocking paradoxes pass under its name. 
However, as these paradoxes have, with 
great acuteness and ingenuity, been deduced 
by just reasoning from the theory of ideas, 
they must at last bring this advantage, that 
positions so shocking to the common sense 
of mankind, and so contrary to the decisions 
of all our intellectual powers, will open men's 
eyes, and break the force of the prejudice 
which hath held them entangled in that 
theory. [218] 

CHAPTER XV. 

ACCOUNT OF THE SYSTEM OF LEIBNITZ. 

There is yet another system concerning 

perception, of which I shall give some ac- 

[216-218] 



chap, xv.] ACCOUNT OF THE SYSTEM OF LEIBNITZ. 



307 



count, because of the fame of its author. It 
is the invention of the famous German phi- 
losopher Leibnitz, who, while he lived, held 
the .first rank among the Germans in all 
parts of philosophy, as well as in mathe- 
matics, in jurisprudence, in the knowledge 
of antiquities, and in every branch both of 
science and of literature. He was highly 
respected by emperors, and by many kings 
and princes, who bestowed upon him singu- 
lar marks of their esteem. He was a par- 
ticular favourite of our Queen Caroline, 
consort of George II., with whom he con- 
tinued his correspondence by letters, after 
she came to the crown of Britain, till his 
death. 

The famous controversy between him and 
the British mathematicians, whether he or 
Sir Isaac Newton was the inventor of that 
noble improvement in mathematics, called 
by Newton, the method of fluxions, and by 
Leibnitz the differential method, engaged 
the attention of the mathematicians in 
Europe for several years. He had likewise 
a controversy with the learned and judicious 
Dr Samuel Clarke, about several points of 
the Newtonian philosophy which he dis- 
approved. The papers which gave occasion 
to- this controversy, with all the replies and 
rejoinders, had the honour to be transmitted 
from the one party to the other, through 
the hands of Queen Caroline, and were 
afterwards published. 

His authority, in all matters of philoso- 
phy, is still so great in most parts of Ger- 
many, that they are considered as bold 
spirits, and a kind of heretics, who dissent 
from him in anything. [219] Carolus - 
Wolfius, the most voluminous writer in 
philosophy of this age, is considered as the 
great interpreter and advocate of the Leib- 
nitzian system, and reveres as an oracle 
whatever has dropped from the pen of 
Leibnitz. This author proposed two great 
works upon the mind. The first, which I 
have seen, he published with the title of 
" Psychologia Empirica, seu Experiment- 
alis."-f- The other was to have the title of 
" Psychologia Rationalis ;" and to it he 
refers for his explication of the theory of 
Leibnitz with regard to the mind. But 
whether it was published I have not learn- 
ed.* 

I must, therefore, take the short account 
I am to give of this system from the writ- 
ings of Leibnitz himself, without the light 
which his interpreter Wolfius may have 
thrown upon it. i 

Leibnitz conceived the whole universe, 



* His name was Christian. — H. 

+ This title is incorrect. It is "Psychologia Em- 
pirica methodo scientifica pertractata," &c The 
work appeared in 1732.— H. 

t It waspiblished-in 1734. Such careless ignorance 
of the most distinguished works on. the subject of an 
author's speculations, is peculiarly British. — H. 
[219,220] 



bodies as well as minds, to be made up 
of monads — that is, simple substances, each 
of which is, by the Creator, in the begin- 
ning of its existence, endowed with certain 
active and perceptive powers. A monad, 
therefore, is an active substance, simple, 
without parts or figure, which has within 
itself the power to produce all the changes 
it undergoes from the beginning of its ex- 
istence to eternity. The changes which 
the monad undergoes, of what kind soever, 
though they may seem to us the effect of 
causes operating from without, yet they 
are only the gradual and successive evolu- 
tions of its own internal powers, which 
would have produced all the same changes 
and motions, although there had been no 
other being in the universe. 

Every human soul is a monad joined to 
an organized body, which organized body 
consists of an infinite number of monads, 
each having some degree of active and of 
perceptive power in itself. But the whole 
machine of the body has a relation to that 
monad which we call the soul, which is, as 
it were, the centre of the whole. [220] 

As the universe is completely filled with 
monads, without any chasm or void, and 
thereby every body acts upon every other 
body, according to its vicinity or distance, 
and is mutually reacted upon by every other 
body, it follows, says Leibnitz, that every 
monad is a kind of living mirror, which re- 
flects the whole universe, according to its 
point of view, and represents the whole 
more or less distinctly. 

I cannot undertake to reconcile this part 
of the system with what was before men- 
tioned — to wit, that every change in a 
monad is the evolution of its own original 
powers, and would have happened though 
no other substance had been created. But, 
to proceed. 

There are different orders of monads, 
some higher and others lower. The higher 
orders he calls dominant ; such is the hu- 
man soul. The monads that compose the 
organized bodies of men, animals, and plants, 
are of a lower order, and subservient to the 
dominant monads. But every monad, of 
whatever order, is a complete substance in 
itself — indivisible, having no parts ; inde- 
structible, because, having no parts, it can- 
not perish by any kind of decomposition ; 
it can only perish by annihilation, and we 
have no reason to believe that God will ever 
annihilate any of the beings which he has 
made. 

The monads of a lower order may, by a 
regular evolution of their powers, rise to a 
higher order. They may successively be 
joined to organized bodies, of various forms 
and different degrees of perception ; but 
they never die, nor cease to be in some de- 
gree active and percipient. 

x2 



303 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



£essay (I. 



This philosopher makes a distinction be- 
tween perception and what he calls apper- 
ception. The first is common to all monads, 
the last proper to the higher orders, among 
which are human souls. [221] 

By apperception he understands that de- 
gree of perception which reflects, as it were, 
upon itself; by which we are conscious of 
our own existence, and conscious of our 
perceptions ; by which we can reflect upon 
the operations of our own minds, and can 
comprehend abstract truths. The mind, in 
many operations, he thinks, particularly in 
sleep, and in many actions common to us 
with the brutes, has not this apperception, 
although it is still filled with a multitude of 
obscure and indistinct perceptions, of which 
we are not conscious. 

He conceives that our bodies and minds 
are united in such a manner that neither 
has any physical influence upon the other. 
Each performs all its operations by its own 
internal springs and powers ; yet the oper- 
ations of one correspond exactly with those 
of the other, by a pre-established harmony ; 
just as one clock may be so adjusted as to 
keep time with another, although each has 
its own moving power, and neither receives 
any part of its motion from the other. 

So that, according to this system, all our 
perceptions of external objects would be the 
same, though external things had never 
existed ; our perception of them would con- 
tinue, although, by the power of God, they 
should this moment be annihilated. We 
do not perceive external things because they 
exist, but because the soul was originally so 
constituted as to produce in itself all its 
successive changes, and all its successive 
perceptions, independently of the external 
objects. 

Every perception or apperception, every 
operation, in a word, of the soul, is a neces- 
sary consequence of the state of it imme- 
diately preceding that operation ; and this 
state is the necessary consequence of the 
state preceding it ; and so backwards, until 
you come to its first formation and consti- 
tution, which produces, successively and 
by necessary consequence, all its succes- 
sive states to the end of its existence ; 
[222] so that, in this respect, the soul, and 
every monad, may be compared to a watch 
wound up, which, having the spring of its 
motion in itself, by the gradual evolution of 
its own spring, produces all the successive 
motions we observe in it. 

In this account of Leibnitz's system con- 
cerning monads and the pre-established 
harmony, I have kept, as nearly as I could, 
to his own expressions, in his " New System 
of the Nature and Communication of Sub- 
stances, and of the Union of Soul and 
Body ;" and in the several illustrations of 
that new system which he afterwards pub- 



lished ; and in his " Principles of Nature 
and Grace founded in Reason." I shall 
now make a few remarks upon this system. 

1. To pass over the irresistible necessity 
of all human actions, which makes a part of 
this system, that will be considered in an- 
other place, 1 observe, first, that the dis- 
tinction made between perception and ap- 
perception is obscure and unphilosophical. 
As far as we can discover, every operation 
of our mind is attended with consciousness, 
and particularly that which we call the per- 
ception of external objects ; and to speak of 
a perception of which we are not conscious, 
is to speak without any meaning. 

As consciousness is the only power by 
which we discern the operations of our own 
minds, or can form any notion of them, an 
operation of mind of which we are not con- 
scious, is, we know not what ; and to call 
such an operation by the name of perception, 
is an abuse of language. No man can per- 
ceive an object without being conscious that 
he perceives it. No man can think without 
being conscious that he thinks. What men 
are not conscious of, cannot therefore, with- 
out impropriety, be called either perception 
or thought of any kind. And, if we will 
suppose operations of mind of which we are 
not conscious, and give a name to such 
creatures of our imagination, that name 
must signify what we know nothing about.* 
[223] 

2. To suppose bodies organized or un- 
organized, to be made up of indivisible 
monads which have no parts, is contrary to 
all that we know of body. It is essential 
to a body to have parts ; and every part of 
a body is a body, and has parts also. No 
number of parts, without extension or figure, 
not even an infinite number, if we may use ' 
that expression, can, by being put together, 
make a whole that has extension and figure, 
which all bodies have. 

3. It is contrary to all that we know of 
bodies, to ascribe to the monads, of which 
they are supposed to be compounded, per- 
ception and active force. If a philosopher 
thinks proper to say, that a clod of earth 
both perceives and has active force, let him 
bring his proofs. But he ought not to 
expect that men who have understanding 
will so far give it up as to receive without 
proof whatever his imagination may sug- 
gest. 

4. This system overturns all authority of 
our senses, and leaves not the least ground 
to believe the existence of the objects of 

* The .language in which Leibnitz expresses his 
doctrine of latent modifications of mind, which, 
though out of consciousness, manifest their existence 
in their effects, is objectionable; the doctrine itself is 
not only true but of the very highest importance in 
psychology, although it has never yet been appreci- 
ated or even,understood by any writer on philosophy 
in this island. — H. 

[221-223] 



ohap. xv.] ACCOUNT OF THE SYSTEM OF LEIBNITZ. 



209 



sense, or the existence of anything which 
depends upon the authority of our senses ; 
for our perception of objects, according to 
this system, has no dependence upon any- 
thing external, and would be the same as it 
is, supposing external objects had never 
existed, or that they were from this moment 
annihilated. 

It is remarkable that Leibnitz's system, 
that of Malebranche, and the common sys- 
tem of ideas or images of external objects 
in the mind, do all agree in overturning all 
the authority of our senses ; and this one 
thing, as long as men retain their senses, 
will always make all these systems trulv 
ridiculous. 

5. The last observation I shall make 
upon this system, which, indeed, is equally 
applicable to all the systems of Perception 
1 have mentioned, is, that it is all hypo- 
thesis, made up of conjectures and suppo- 
sitions, without proof. The Peripatetics 
supposed sensible species to be sent forth 
by the objects of sense. The moderns sup- 
pose ideas in the brain.or in the mind. [224] 
Malebranche supposed that we perceive 
the ideas of the Divine mind. Leibnitz 
supposed monads and a pre-established har- 
mony; and these monads being creatures 
of his own making, he is at liberty to give 
them what properties and powers his fancy 
may suggest. In like manner, the Indian 
philosopher supposed that the earth is sup- 
ported by a huge elephant, and that the 
elephant stands on the back of a huge tor- 
toise. * 

Such suppositions, while there is no proof 
of them offered, are nothing but the fictions 
of human fancy ; and we ought no more 
to believe them, than we believe Homer's 
fictions of Apollo's silver bow, or Minerva's 
shield, or Venus's girdle. Such fictions in 
poetry are agreeable to the rules of art : 
they are intended to please, not to convince. 
But the philosophers would ha/e us to 
believe their fictions, though tfie ? scoxrnt 
they give of the phenomena of nat ire has 
commonly no more probability .nan the 
account that Homer gives of the plague in 
the Grecian camp, from Apollo taking his 
station on a neighbouring mountain, and 
from his silver bow letting fly his swift 
arrows into the camp. 

Men then only begin to have a true taste 
in philosophy, when they have learned to 
hold hypotheses in just contempt ; and to 
consider them as the reveries of speculative 
men, which will never have any similitude 
to the works of God. 

* It is a disputed point whether Leibnitz were 
serious in his nionadology and pre established har- 
mony. — H. 

[224-226J 



The Supreme Being has given us some 
intelligence of his works, by what our senses 
inform us of external things, and by what 
our consciousness and reflection inform us 
concerning the operations of our own minds. 
Whatever can be inferred from these com- 
mon informations, by just and sound reason- 
ing, is true and legitimate philosophy : but 
wl/at we add to this from conjecture is all 
s/ urious and illegitimate. [225] 

After this long account of the theories 
idvanced by philosophers, to account for 
our perception of external objects, I hope 
it will appear, that neither Aristotle's theory 
of sensible species, nor Malebranche's of 
our seeing things in God, nor the common 
theory of our perceiving ideas in our own 
minds, nor Leibnitz's theory of monads 
and a pre-established harmony, give any 
satisfying account of this power of the mind, 
or make it more intelligible than it is 
without their aid. They are conjectures, 
and, if they were true, would solve no diffi- 
culty, but raise many new ones. It is, 
therefore, more agreeable to good sense 
and to sound philosophy, to rest satisfied 
with what our consciousness and attentive 
reflection discover to us> of the nature of 
perception, than, by inventing hypotheses, 
to attempt to explain things which are 
above the reach of human understanding. 
I believe no man is able to explain how we 
perceive external objects, any more than 
how we are conscious of those that are 
internal. Perception, consciousness, me- 
mory, and imagination, are all original and 
simple powers of the mind, and parts of its 
constitution. For this reason, though I 
have endeavoured to shew that the theories 
of philosophers on this subject are ill 
grounded and insufficient, I do not attempt 
to substitute any other theory in their 
place. 

Every man feels that perception gives 
him an invincible belief of the existence of 
that which he perceives ; and that this 
belief is not the effect of reasoning, but 
the immediate consequence of perception.* 
When philosophers have wearied them- 
selves and their readers with their specula- 
tions upon this subject, they can neither 
strengthen this belief, nor weaken it ; nor 
can they shew how it is produced. It puts 
the philosopher and the peasant upon a 
level ; and neither of them .can give any 
other reason for believing his senses, than 
that he finds it impossible for him to do 
otherwise. [226] 



* In an immediate perception of external things, 
the belief of their existence would not be a conse- 
quence of the perception, but be involved in the per. 
ception itself.— H. 



310 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



CHAPTEK XVI. 



OF SENSATION. 



Having finished what I intend, with 
regard to that act of mind which we call 
the perception of an external object, I 
proceed to consider another, which, by our 
constitution, is conjoined with perception, 
and not with perception only, but with 
many other acts of our minds ; and that is 
sensation. To prevent repetition, I must 
refer the reader to the explication of this 
word given in Essay I., chap. i. 

Almost all our perceptions have corre- 
sponding sensations which constantly ac- 
company them, and, on that account, are 
very apt to be confounded with them. 
Neither ought we to expect that the sens- 
ation, and its corresponding perception, 
should be distinguished in common lan- 
guage, because the purposes of common 
life do not require it. Language is made 
to serve the purposes of ordinary conversa- 
tion ; and we have no reason to expect that 
it should make distinctions that are not of 
common use. Hence it happens, that a 
quality perceived, and the sensation . cor- 
responding to that perception, often go under 
the same name. 

This makes the names of most of our 
sensations ambiguous, and this ambiguity 
hath very much perplexed philosophers. It 
will be necessary to give some instances, to 
illustrate the distinction between our sens- 
ations and the objects of perception. 

When I smell a rose, there is in this 
operation both sensation and perception. 
The agreeable odour I feel, considered by 
itself, without relation to any external ob- 
ject, is merely a sensation. [227] It affects 
the mind in a certain way ; and this affection 
of the mind may be conceived, without a 
thought of the rose, or any other object. 
This sensation can be nothing else than it 
is felt to be. Its very essence consists in 
being felt ; and, when it is not felt, it is not. 
There is no difference between the sensa- 
tion and the feeling of it — they are one and 
the same thing. It is for this reason that 
we before observed that, in sensation, there 
is no object distinct from that act of the 
mind by which it is felt — and this holds 
true with regard to all sensations. 

Let us next attend to the perception 
which we have in smelling a rose. Percep- 
tion has always an external object ; and the 
object of my perception, in this case, is that 
quality in the rose which I discern by the 
sense of smell. Observing that the agree- 
able sensation is raised when the rose is 
near, and ceases when it is removed, I am 
led, by my nature, to conclude some quality 
to be in the rose, which is the cause of this 



sensation. This quality in the rose is the 
object perceived ; and that act of my mind 
by which I have the conviction and belief 
of this quality, is what in this case I call 
perception.* 

But it is here to be observed, that the 
sensation I feel, and the quality in the rose 
which I perceive, are both called by the 
same name. The smell of a rose is the 
name given to both : so that this name hath 
two meanings ; and the distinguishing its 
different meanings removes all perplexity, 
and enables us to give clear and distinct 
answers to questions about which philoso- 
phers have held much dispute, -f- 

Thus, if it is asked, whether the smell 
be in the rose, or in the mind that feels it, 
the answer is obvious : That there are two 
different things signified by the smell of a 
rose ; one of which is in the mind, and can 
be in nothing but in a sentient being ; the 
other is truly and properly in the rose. The 
sensation which I feel is in my mind. The 
mind is the sentient being ; and, as the rose 
is insentient, there can be no sensation, nor 
anything resembling sensation in it. [228] 
But this sensation in my mind is occasioned 
by a certain quality in the rose, which is 
called by the same name with the sensation, 
not on account of any similitude, but be- 
cause of their constant concomitancy. 

All the names we have for smells, tastes, 
sounds, and for the various degrees of heat 
and cold, have a like ambiguity ; and what 
has been said of the smell of a rose may be 
applied to them. They signify both a sens- 
ation, and a quality perceived by means of 
that sensation. The first is the sign, the 
last the thing signified. As both are con- 
joined by nature, and as the purposes of 
common life do not require them to be dis- 
joined in our thoughts, they are both ex- 
pressed by the same name : and this am- 
biguity is to be found in all languages, be- 
cause the reason of it extends to all. 

The same ambiguity is found in the 
names of such diseases as are indicated by 
a particular painful sensation : such as the 
toothache, the headache. The toothache 

* This paragraph appears to be an explicit disa- 
vowal of the doctrine of an intuitive or immediate 
perception. If, from a certain sensible feeling, or 
sensation, (which is itself cognitive of no object,) 1 am 
only determined by my nature to conclude that there 
is some external quality which is the cause of this 
sensation, and if this quality, thus only known as an 
inference from its effect, be the object perceived; then 
is perception not an act immediately cognitive of 
any existing object, and the object pprceived is, in 
fact, except as an imaginary something, unknown. 
— H. 

+ In reference to this and the following paragraphs, 
I may observe that the distinction of subjective and 
objective qualities here vaguely attempted, had been 
already precisely accomplished by Aristotle, in his 
discrimination of <ra.By)Tix,a.) xoioTv,Tif fqualitatespati. 
biles,) and jra&i (passioncs). In regard to the Car. 
tesian distinction, which is equally precise, but of 
which likewise Peid is unaware, see above, p. 205, 
col. b, note*.— H 

[2-27, 2281 



CHAP. XVI. J 



OF SENSATION. 



311 



signifies a painful sensation, which can only 
be in a sentient being ; but it signifies also 
a disorder in the body, which has no simili- 
tude to a sensation, but is naturally con- 
nected with it. 

Pressing my hand with force against the 
table, I feel pain, and I feel the table to be 
hard. The pain is a sensation of the mind, 
and there is nothing that resembles it in 
the table. The hardness is in the table, 
nor is there anything resembling it in the 
mind. Feeling is applied to both ; but in 
a different sense ; being a word commomto 
the act of sensation, and to that of perceiv- 
ing by the sense of touch. 

I touch the table gently with my hand, 
and I feel it to be smooth, hard, and cold. 
These are qualities of the table perceived by 
touch ; but I perceive them by means of a 
sensation which indicates them. This sens- 
ation not being painful, I commonly give no 
attention to it. [229] It carries my thought 
immediately to the thing signified by it, and 
is itself forgot, as if it had never been. But, 
by repeating it, and turning my attention 
to it, and abstracting my thought from the 
thing signified by it, I find it to be merely 
a sensation, and that it has no similitude to 
the hardness, smoothness, or coldness of 
the table, which are signified by it. 

It is indeed difficult, at first, to disjoin 
things in our attention which have always 
been conjoined, and to make that an object 
of reflection which never was so before ; 
but some pains and practice will overcome 
this difficulty in those who .have got the 
habit of reflecting on the operations of their 
own minds. 

Although the present subject leads us 
only to consider the sensations which we 
have by means of our external senses, yet 
it will serve to illustrate what has been said, 
and, I apprehend, is of importance in itself, 
to observe, that many operations of mind, 
to which we give one name, and which we 
always consider as one thing, are complex 
in their nature, and made up of several 
more simple ingredients ; and of these ingre- 
dients sensation very often makes one. Of 
this we shall give some instances- 

The appetite of hunger includes an un- 
easy sensation, and a desire of food. Sens- 
ation and desire are different acts of mind. 
The last, from its nature, must have an 
object ; the first has no object. These two 
ingredients may always be separated in 
thought — perhaps they sometimes are, in 
reality ; but hunger includes both. 

Benevolence towards our fellow-creatures 
includes an agreeable feeling; but it includes 
also a desire of the happiness of others. 
The ancients commonly called it desire. 
Many moderns chuse rather to call it a feel- 
ing. Both are right : and they only err who 
exclude either of the ingredients. [230] 
r229-2.31~l 



Whether these two ingredients are neces- 
sarily connected, is, perhaps, difficult for us 
to determine, there being many necessary 
connections which we do not perceive to be 
necessary ; but we can disjoin them in 
thought. They are different acts of the 
mind. 

An uneasy feeling, and a desire, are, in 
like manner, the ingredients of malevolent 
affections ; such as malice, envy, revenge. 
The passion of fear includes an uneasy 
sensation or feeling, and an opinion of 
danger ; and hope is made up of the con- 
trary ingredients. When we hear of a 
heroic action, the sentiment which it raises 
in our mind, is made up of various ingre- 
dients. There is in it an agreeable feeling, 
a benevolent affection to the person, and a 
judgment or opinion of his merit. 

If we thus analyse the various operations 
of our minds, we shall find that many of 
them which we consider as perfectly simple, 
because we have been accustomed to call 
them by one name, are compounded of more 
simple ingredients ; and that sensation, or 
feeling, which is only a more refined kind 
o f sensation, makes one ingredient, Dot 
only in the perception of external objects, 
but in most operations of the mind. 

A small degree of reflection may satisfy 
us that the number and variety of our sens- 
ations and feelings is prodigious; for, to 
omit all those which accompany our appe- 
tites, passions, and affections, our moral 
sentiments and sentiments of taste, even 
our external senses, furnish a great variety 
of sensations, differing in kind, and almost 
in every kind an endless variety of degrees. 
Every variety we discern, with regard to 
taste, smell, sound, colour, heat, and cold, 
and in the tangible qualities of bodies, is 
indicated by a sensation corresponding to 
it. 

The most general and the most import- 
ant division of our sensations and feelings, 
is into the agreeable, the disagreeable, and 
the indifferent: Everything we call plea- 
sure, happiness, or enjoyment, on the one 
hand; and, on the other, everything we 
call misery, pain, or uneasiness, is sensa- 
tion or feeling ; for no man can for the pre- 
sent be more happy or more miserable than 
he feels himself to be. [231] He cannot 
be deceived with regard to the enjoyment 
or suffering of the present moment. 

But I apprehend that, besides the sens- 
ations that are either agreeable or disagree- 
able, th«:re is still a greater number that 
are indifferent. * To these we give so little 
attention, that they have no name, and are 
immediately forgot, as if tney had never 
been ; and it requires attention to the ope- 



* This is a point in dispute among philosophers. 
-H. 



312 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



rations of our minds to be convinced of their 
existence. 

For this end we may observe, that, to a 
good ear, every human voice is distinguish- 
able from all others. Some voices are plea- 
sant, some disagreeable ; but the far greater 
part can neither be said to be one nor the 
other. The same thing may be said of 
other sounds, and no less of tastes, smells, 
and colours ; and, if we consider that our 
senses are in continual exercise while we are 
awake, that some sensation attends every 
object they present to us, and that familiar 
objects seldom raise any emotion, pleasant 
or painful, we shall see reason, besides the 
agreeable and disagreeable, to admit a third 
class of sensations that may be called in- 
different. 

The sensations that are indifferent, are 
far from being useless. They serve as 
signs to distinguish things that differ ; and 
the information we have concerning things 
external, comes by their means. Thus, if 
a man had no ear to receive pleasure from 
the harmony or melody of sounds, he would 
still find the sense of hearing of great 
utility. Though sounds give him neithei 
pleasure nor pain of themselves, they would 
give him much useful information ; and the 
like may be said of the sensations we have 
by all the other senses. [232] 

As to the sensations and feelings that are 
agreeable or disagreeable, they differ much 
not only in degree, but in kind and in dig- 
nity. Some belong to the animal part of 
our nature, and are common to us with the 
brutes ; others belong to the rational and 
moral part. The first are more properly 
called sensations ; the last, feelings. The 
French word sentiment is common to both. * 

The intention of nature in them is for the 
most part obvious, and well deserving our 
notice. It has been beautifully illustrated 
by a very elegant French writer,* in his 
" Theorie des Sentiments Aqreables" 

The Author of Nature, in the distribution 
of agreeable and painful feelings, hath 
wisely and benevolently consulted the good 
of the human species, and hath even shewn 
us, by the same means, what tenor of con- 
duct we ought to hold. For, first, The 
painful sensations of the animal kind are 
admonitions to avoid what would hurt us ; 
and the agreeable sensations of this kind 
invite us to those actions that are necessary 
to the preservation of the individual or of 
the kind. Secondly, By the same means, 
nature invites us to moderate bodily exer- 
cise, and admonishes us to avoid idleness 
and inactivity on the one hand, and exces- 
sive labour and fati/nie on the other. 



» Some French philosophers, since Keid, have 
attempted the distinction of sentiment and sensation. 

t Levesque de PouMy H. 



Thirdly, The moderate exercise of all oub 
rational powers gives pleasure. Fourthly, 
Every species of beauty is beheld with 
pleasure, and every species of deformity 
with disgust ; and we shall find all that we 
call beautiful, to be something estimable or 
useful in itself, or a sign of something that 
is estimable or useful. Fifthly, The bene- 
volent affections are all accompanied with 
an agreeable feeling, the malevolent with 
the contrary. And, sixthly, The highest, 
the noblest, and most durable pleasure is 
that of doing well, and acting the part that 
becomes us ; and the most bitter and pain- 
ful sentiment, the anguish and remorse of 
a guilty conscience. These observations, 
with regard to the economy of nature in 
the distribution of our painful and agree- 
able sensations and feelings, are illustrated 
by the author last mentioned, so elegantly 
and judiciously, that I shall not attempt to 
say anything upon them after him. [233] 

I shall conclude this chapter by observ- 
ing that, as the confounding our sensations 
with that perception of external objects 
which is constantly conjoined with them, 
has been the occasion of most of the errors 
and false theories of philosophers with re- 
gard to the senses ; so the distinguishing 
these operations seems to me to be the key 
that leads to a right understanding of both. 

Sensation, taken by itself, implies neither 
the conception nor belief of any external 
object. It supposes a sentient being, and 
a certain manner in which that being is 
affected ; but it supposes no more. Per- 
ception implies an immediate conviction 
and belief of something external — some- 
thing different both from the mind that 
perceives, and from the act of perception. 
Things so different in their nature ought 
to be distinguished ; but, by our constitu- 
tion, they are always united. Every dif- 
ferent perception is conjoined with a sensa- 
tion that is proper to it. The one is the 
sign, the other the thing signified. They 
coalesce in our imagination. They are sig- 
nified by one name, and are considered as 
one simple operation. The purposes of life 
do not require them to be distinguished. 

It is the philosopher alone who has occa- 
sion to distinguish them, when he would 
analyse the operation compounded of them. 
But he has no suspicion that there is any 
composition in it ; and to discover this re- 
quires a degree of reflection which has been 
too little practised even by philosophers. 

In the old philosophy, sensation and per- 
ception were perfectly confounded. The 
sensible species coming from the object, and 
impressed upon the mind, was the whole ; 
and you might call it sensation or percep- 
tion as you pleased* 



♦ This is not correct ; for, in the distinction of Hie 



f232, 233] 



chap, xvii.] OF THE OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION. 



313 



Des Cartes and Locke, attending more 
to the operations of their own minds, say, 
that the sensations by which we have notice 
of secondary qualities have no resemblance 
to anything that pertains to body ; but they 
did not see that this might, with equal justice, 
be applied to the primary qualities. [234] 
Mr Locke maintains, that the sensations we 
have from primary qualities are resem- 
blances of those qualities. This shews how 
grossly the most ingenious men may err 
with regard to the operations of their minds. 
It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that it is 
much easier to have a distinct notion of the 
sensations that belong to secondary than 
of those that belong to the primary quali- 
ties.* The reason of this will appear in 
the next chapter. 

But, had Mr Locke attended with suffi- 
cient accuracy to the sensations-!- which he 
was every day and every hour receiving 
from primary qualities, he would have seen 
that they can as little resemble any quality 
of an inanimated being as pain can resemble 
a cube or a circle. 

What had escaped this ingenious philo- 
sopher, was clearly discerned by Bishop 
Berkeley. He had a just notion of sensa- 
tions, and saw that it was impossible that 
anything in an insentient being could re- 
semble them ; a thing so evident in itself, 
that it seems wonderful that it should have 
been so long unknown. 

But let us attend to the consequence of 
this discovery- Philosophers, as well as the 
vulgar, had been accustomed to comprehend 
both sensation and perception under one 
name, and to consider them as one uncom- 
pounded operation. Philosophers, even 
more than the vulgar, gave the name of 
sensation to the whole operation of the 
senses ; and all the notions we have of ma- 
terial things were called ideas of sensation. 
This led Bishop Berkeley to take one in- 
gredient of a complex operation for the 
whole ; and, having clearly discovered the 
nature of sensation, taking it for granted 
that all that the senses present to the mind 
is sensation, which can have no resemblance 
to anything material, he concluded that 
there is no material world. [235] 

If the senses furnished us with no mate- 
rials of thought but sensations, his conclu- 
sion must be just ; for no sensation can give 
us the conception of material things, far less 



species impressa and species expressa, the distinc- 
tion of sensation and perception could be perceived ; 
but, in point of fact, many even of the Aristotelians, 
who admitted species at all, allowed them only in one 
or two of the senses. See Notes D * and M — H. 

* The reader will observe that Reid says, " dis- 
tinct notion of the sensations that belong to the se- 
condary qualities," and not distinct notion of the 
secondary qualities themselves. — H. 

| Here again the reader will observe that the term 
is sensations, and not notions, of the primary quali- 
ties.— H. 



[234-236] 



any argument to prove their existence. But, 
if it is true that by our senses we have not 
only a variety of sensations, but likewise a 
conception and an immediate natural con- 
viction of external objects, he reasons from 
a false supposition, and his arguments fall 
to the ground.* 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OF THE OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION ; AND, FIRST, 
OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES. 

The objects of perception are the various 
qualities of bodies. Intending to treat of 
these only in general, and chiefly with a view 
to explain the notions which our senses 
give us of them, I begin with the distinction 
between primary and secondary qualities. 
These were distinguished very early. The 
Peripatetic system confounded them, and 
left no difference. The distinction was again 
revived by Des Cartes and Locke, and a 
second time abolished by Berkeley and 
Hume. If the real foundation of this dis- 
tinction can be pointed out, it will enable us 
to account for the various revolutions in the 
sentiments of philosophers concerning it. 

Every one knows that extension, divisi- 
bility, figure, motion, solidity, hardness, 
softness, and fluidity, were by Mr Locke 
called primary qualities of body ; and that 
sound, colour, taste, smell, and heat or cold, 
were called secondary qualities. Is there a 
just foundation for this distinction ? Is 
there anything common to the primary 
which belongs not to the secondary ? And 
what is it ? 

I answer, That there appears to me to be 
a real foundation for the distinction ; and it 
is this — that our senses give us a direct and 
a distinct notion of the primary qualities, 
and inform us what they are in themselves, -f- 
But of the secondary qualities, our senses 
give us only a relative and obscure notion. 
[236] They inform us only, that they are 
qualities that affect us in a certain manner 
— that is, produce in us a certain sensation ; 
but as to what they are in themselves, our 
senses leave us in the dark.t 



* On this whole distinction, see Note D. * . — H. 

t By the expression, '* what they are in themselves," 
in reference to the primary qualities, and of " rela- 
tive notion," in reference to the secondary, Reid 
cannot mean that the former are known to us ato- 
lutely and in themselves — that is, out of relation to our 
cognitive faculties ; for he elsewhere admits that all 
our knowledge is relative. Farther, if " our senses 
give us a direct and distinct notion of the primary 
qualities, and inform \ s what they are in themselves," 
these qualities, as known, must resemble, or be iden- 
tical with, these qualities as existing. — H. 

t The distinctions of perception and sensation, and 
of primary and secondary qualities, may be reduced 
to one higher priuc pie. Knowledge is partly object' 
ive, partly subjective ; both these elements are essen- 
tial to every cognition, but in every cognition they 
are always in the inverse ratio of each other. Nov/ 



314 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



Every man capable of reflection may 
easily satisfy himself that he has a perfectly 
clear and distinct notion of extension, divisi- 
bility, figure, and motion. The solidity of 
a body means no more but that it excludes 
other bodies from occupying the same place 
at the same time Hardness, softness, and 
fluidity are different degrees of cohesion in 
the parts of a body. It is fluid when it has 
no sensible cohesion ; soft, when the cohe- 
sion is weak ; and hard, when it is strong. 
Of the cause of this cohesion we are ignor- 
ant, but the thing itself we understand per- 
fectly, being immediately informed of it by 
the sense of touch. It is evident, therefore, 
that of the primary qualities we have a clear 
and distinct notion ; we know what they 
are, though we may be ignorant of their 
causes. 

I observed, farther, that the notion we 
have of primary qualities is direct, and not 
relative only. A relative notion of a thing, 
is, strictly speaking, no notion of the thing 
at all, but only of some • relation which it 
bears to something else. 

Thus, gravity sometimes signifies the tend- 
ency of bodies towards the earth ; some- 
times it signifies the cause of that tendency. 
When it means the first, I have a direct 
and distinct notion of gravity ; I see it, and 
feel it, and know perfectly what it is ; but 
this tendency must have a cause. We give 
the same name to the cause ; and that cause 
has been an object of thought and of specu- 
lation. Now, what notion have we of this 
cause when we think and reason about it ? 
It is evident we think of it as an unknown 
cause, of a known effect. This is a relative 
notion ; and it must be obscure, because it 
gives us no conception of what the thing is, 
but of what relation it bears to something 
else. Every relation which a thing un- 
known bears to something that is known, 
may give a relative notion of it ; and there 
are many objects of thought and of dis- 
course of which our faculties can give no 
better than a relative notion. [237] 

Having premised these things to explain 
what is meant by a relative notion, it is evi- 
dent that our notion of primary qualities is 
not of this kind ; we know what they are, 
and not barely what relation they bear to 
something else. 

It is otherwise with secondary qualities. 
If you ask me, what is that quality or mo- 
dification in a rose which I call its smell, I 
am at a loss to answer directly. Upon re- 
flection, I find, that I have a distinct notion 
of the sensation which it produces in my 
mind. But there can be nothing like to 
this sensation in the rose, because it is in- 



in perception and theprimary qualities, the objective 
element preponderates, whereas the subjective ele- 
ment preponderates in sensation and the secondary 
Qualities. See Notes D and D * .— H. 



sentient. The quality in the rose is some- 
thing which occasions the sensation in me ; 
but what that something is, I know not. 
My senses give me no information upon 
this point. The only notion, therefore, my 
senses give is this — that smell in the rose is 
an unknown quality or modification, which 
is the cause or occasion of a sensation which 
I know well. The relation which this un- 
known quality bears to the sensation with 
which nature hath connected it,,isall I learn 
from the sense of smelling ; but this is 
evidently a relative notion. The same rea- 
soning will apply to every secondary quality. 

Thus, I think it appears that there is a 
real foundation for the distinction of pri- 
mary from secondary qualities ; and that 
they are distinguished by this — that of the 
primary we have by our senses a direct and 
distinct notion ; but of the secondary only 
a relative notion, which must, because it is 
only relative, be obscure ; they are con- 
ceived only as the unknown causes or occa- 
sions of certain sensations with which we 
are well acquainted. 

The account I have given of this distinc- 
tion is founded upon no hypothesis. [238] 
Whether our notions of primary qualities 
are direct and distinct, those of the se- 
condary relative and obscure, is a matter 
of fact, of which every man may have cer- 
tain knowledge by attentive reflection upon 
them. To this reflection I appeal, as the 
proper test of what has been advanced, and 
proceed to make some reflections on this 
subject. 

1. The primary qualities are neither sens- 
ations, nor are they resemblances of sens- 
ations. This appears to me self-evident. 
I have a clear and distinct notion of each of 
the primary qualities. I have a clear and 
distinct notion of sensation. I can com- 
pare the one with the other ; and, when I 
do so, I am not able to discern a resembling 
feature. Sensation is the act or the feeling 
(I dispute not which) of a sentient being. 
Figure, divisibility, solidity, are neither 
acts nor feelings. Sensation supposes a 
sentient being as its subject ; for a sensa- 
tion that is not felt by some sentient being, 
is an absurdity. Figure and divisibility 
supposes a subject that is figured and divi- 
sible, but not a subject that is sentient. 

2. We have no reason to think that any 
of the secondary qualities resemble any sens- 
ation. The absurdity of this notion has 
been clearly shewn by Des Cartes, Locke, 
and many modern philosophers. It was a 
tenet of the ancient philosophy, and is still 
by many imputed to the vulgar, but only as 
a vulgar error. It is too evident to need 
proof, that the vibrations of a sounding 
body do not resemble the sensation of sound, 
nor the effluvia of an odorous body the sens- 
ation of smell. 

[ 237, 2381 



chap, xvii.] OF THE OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION. 



315 



3. The distinctness of our notions of pri- 
mary qualities prevents all questions and 
disputes about their nature. There are no 
different opinions about the nature of ex- 
tension, figure, or motion, or the nature of 
any primary quality. Their nature is man- 
ifest to our senses, and cannot be unknown 
to any man, or mistaken by him, though 
their causes may admit of dispute. [239] 

The primary qualities are the object of 
the mathematical sciences; and the dis- 
tinctness of our notions of them enables 
us to reason demonstratively about them to 
a great extent. Their various modifications 
are precisely defined in the imagination, and 
thereby capable of being compared, and their 
relations determined with precision and cer- 
tainty. 

It is not so with secondary qualities. 
Their nature not being manifest to the sense, 
maybe a subject of dispute. Our feeling 
informs us that the fire is hot ; but it does 
not inform us what that heat of the fire is. 
But does it not appear a contradiction, to 
say we know that the fire is hot, but we 
know not what that heat is ? I answer, 
there is the same appearance of contradic- 
tion in many things that must be granted. 
We know that wine has an inebriating qua- 
lity ; but we know not what that quality is. 
It is true, indeed, that, if we had not some 
notion of what is meant by the heat of fire, 
and by an inebriating quality, we could 
affirm nothing of either with understand- 
ing. We have a notion of both ; but it -is 
only a relative notion. We know that they 
are the causes of certain known effects. 

4. The nature of secondary qualities is a 
proper subject of philosophical disquisition ; 
and in this philosophy has made some pro- 
gress. It has been discovered, that the 
sensation of smell is occasioned by the 
effluvia of bodies ; that of sound by their 
vibration. The disposition of bodies to re- 
flect a particular kind of light, occasions the 
sensation of colour. Very curious dis- 
coveries have been made of the nature of 
heat, and an ample field of discovery in 
these subjects remains. 

5. We may see why the sensations be- 
longing to secondary qualities are an object 
of our attention, while those which belong 
to the primary are not. 

The first are not only signs of the ob- 
ject perceived, but they bear a capital part 
in the notion we form of it. [240] We 
conceive it only as that which occasions such 
a sensation, and therefore cannot reflect 
upon it without thinking of the sensation 
which it occasions : we have no other mark 
whereby to distinguish it. The thought of 
a secondary quality, therefore, always car- 
ries us back to the sensation which it pro- 
duces. We give the same name to both, 
and are apt to confound them together. 
H239-2411 



But, having a clear and distinct conception 
of primary qualities, we have no need, when 
we think of them, to recall their sensations. 
When a primary quality is perceived, the 
sensation immediately leads our thought to 
the quality signified by it, and is itself for- 
got. We have no occasion afterwards to 
reflect upon it ; and so we come to be as 
little acquainted with it as if we had never 
felt it. This is the case with the sensations 
of all primary qualities, when they are not 
so painful or pleasant as to draw our atten- 
tion. 

When a man moves his hand rudely 
against a pointed hard body, he feels pain, 
and may easily be persuaded that this pain 
is a sensation, and that there is nothing 
resembling it in the hard body ; at the same 
time, he perceives the body to be hard and 
pointed, and he knows that these qualities 
belong to the body only. In this case, it is 
easy to distinguish what he feels from what 
he perceives. 

Let him again touch the pointed body 
gently, so as to give him no pain ; and now 
you can hardly persuade him that he feels 
anything but the figure and hardness of the 
body : so difficult it is to attend to the sens- 
ations belonging to primary qualities, when 
they are neither pleasant nor painful. They 
carry the thought to the external object, 
and immediately disappear and are forgot. 
Nature intended them only as signs ; and 
when they have served that purpose they 
vanish. 

We are now to consider the opinions 
both of the vulgar and of philosophers upon 
this subject. [241] As to the former, it 
is not to be expected that they should make 
distinctions which have no connection with 
the common affairs of life ; they do not, 
therefore, distinguish the primary from the 
secondary qualities, but speak of both as 
being equally qualities of the external ob- 
ject. Of the primary qualities they have a 
distinct notion, as they are immediately and 
distinctly, perceived by the senses ; of the 
secondary, their notions, as I apprehend, 
are confused and indistinct, rather than 
erroneous. A secondary quality is the 
unknown cause or occasion of a well-known 
effect ; and the same name is common to 
the cause and the effect. Now, to dis- 
tinguish clearly the different ingredients of a 
complex notion, and, at the same time, the 
different meanings of an ambiguous word, 
is the work of a philosopher ; and is not 
to be expected of the vulgar, when their 
occasionsido not require it. 

I grant, therefore, that the notion which 
the vulgar have of secondary qualities, is 
indistinct and inaccurate. But there seems 
to be a contradiction between the vulgar 
and the philosopher upon this subject, and 
each charges the other with a gross ab- 



316 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



L ESSAY II. 



surdity. The vulgar say, that fire is hot, 
and snow cold, and sugar sweet ; and that 
to deny this is a gross absurdity, and con- 
tradicts the testimony of our senses. The 
philosopher says, that heat, and cold, and 
sweetness, are nothing but sensations in 
our minds ; and it is absurd to conceive 
that these sensations are in the fire, or in 
the snow, or in the sugar. 

I believe this contradiction, between the 
vulgar and the philosopher, is more apparent 
than real ; and that it is owing to an abuse 
of language on the part of the philosopher, 
and to indistinct notions on the part of the 
vulgar. The philosopher says, there is no 
heat in the fire, meaning that the fire has 
not the sensation of heat. His meaning is 
just ; and the vulgar will agree with him, 
as soon as they understand his meaning : 
But his language is improper ; for there is 
really a quality in the fire, of which the 
proper name is heat ; and the name of heat 
is given to this quality, both by philosophers 
and by the vulgar, much more frequently than 
to the sensation of heat. [242] This speech 
of the philosopher, therefore, is meant by 
him in one sense ; it is taken by the vulgar 
in another sense. In the sense in which 
they take it, it is indeed absurd, and so 
they hold it to be. In the sense in which 
he means it, it is true ; and the vulgar, as 
soon as they are made to understand that 
sense, will acknowledge it to be true. They 
know, as well as the philosopher, that the 
fire does not feel heat : and this is all that 
he means by saying there is no heat in the 
fire.* 

In the opinions of philosophers about 
primary andgsecondary qualities, there have 
been, as was before observed, several revo- 
lutions. -J- They were distinguished, long be- 
fore the days of Aristotle, by the sect called 
Atomists : among whom Democritus made 
a capital figure. In those times, the name 
of quality was applied only to those we call 
secondary qualities ; the primary, being con- 
sidered as essential to matter, were not 
called qualities. % That the atoms, which 
they held to be the first principles of things, 
were extended, solid, figured, and movable, 
there was no doubt ; but the question was, 
whether they had smell, taste, and colour ? 
or, as it was commonly expressed, whether 
they had qualities ? The Atomists main- 
tained, that they had not ; that the quali- 
ties were not in bodies, but were something 
resulting from the operation of bodies upon 
our senses. § 



* All this ambiguity was understood and articu. 
•ately explained by former philos >phers. See above, 
notes at pp 205 and 310, and No e D.— H. 

+ See Note D — H. 

% The Atomists derived the qualitative attributes 
of.things from the quantitative — H. 

\ Still Democritus suppose i certain real or ob- 
jective causes f >r the subjsct ve differences of our 



It would seem that, when men began to 
speculate upon this subject, the primary 
qualities appeared so clear and manifest 
that they could entertain no doubt of their 
existence wherever matter existed ; but the 
secondary so obscure that they were at a 
loss where to place them. They used this 
comparison : as fire, which is neither in the 
flint nor in the steel, is produced by their 
collision, so those qualities, though not in 
bodies, are produced by their impulse upon 
our senses. [243] 

This doctrine was opposed by Aristotle. * 
He believed taste and colour to be substan- 
tial forms of bodies, and that their species, 
as well as those of figure and motion, are 
received by the senses, -f- 

In believing that what we commonly 
call taste and colour, is something really 
inherent in body, and does not depend upon 
its being tasted and seen, he followed nature. 
But, in believing that our sensations of 
taste and colour are the forms or species of 
those qualities received by the senses, he 
followed his own theory, which was an ab- 
surd fiction.-}- Des Cartes not only shewed 
the absurdity of sensible species received by 
the senses, but gave a more just and more 
intelligible account of secondary qualities 
than had been given before. Mr Locke 
followed him, and bestowed much pains 
upon this subject. He was the first, I 
think, that gave them the name of secondary 
qualities,^ which has been very gsnerally 
adopted. He distinguished the sensation 
from the quality in the body, which is the 
cause or occasion of that sensation, and 
shewed that there neither is nor can be any 
similitude between them.§ 

By this account, the senses are acquitted 
of putting any fallacy upon us; the sensation 
is real, and no fallacy ; the quality in the 
body, which is the cause or occasion of this 
sensation, is likewise real, though the nature 
of it is not manifest to our senses. If we 
impose upon ourselves, by confounding the 
j-ensation with the quality that occasions 
it, this is owing to rash judgment or weak 
understanding, but not to any false testi- 
mony of our senses. 

This account of secondary qualities I take 

sensations Thus, in the different forms, positions, 
and relations of atoms, he sought the ground of 
difference of tastes, colours, heat and cold, &c. See 
Theophrastus De Sensu, § 65 —Aristotle De Anima, 
iii. 2.— Galen De Elementis—S\m^\\c\\xs in Phys. 
Auscult. libros, f. 119, b.— H. 

* Aristotle admitted that the doctrine in question 
was true, of colour, taste, &c, as »<*•»•' tvte/yuctv, but 
not true of them as *«t« $uva/u.iv. See be Anima 
iii.2 — H. 

t This is not really Aristotle's doctrine.— H. 

t Locke only gave a new meaning to old terms. 
The first and second or the primary and secondary 
qualities of Aristotle, denoted a distinction similar 
to, but not identical with, that in question— H. 

§ He distinguished nothing which had not been 
more precisely discriminated by Aristotle and the 
Cartesians. — H. 

[242, 243] 



chap, xvn.] OF THE OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION. 



317 



to be very just ; and if Mr Locke had 
stopped here, he would have left the matter 
very clear. But he thought it necessary to 
introduce the theory of ideas, to explain the 
distinction between primary and secondary 
qualities, and by that means, as I think, 
perplexed and darkened it. 

When philosophers speak about ideas, we 
are often at a loss to know what they mean 
by them, and may be apt to suspect that 
they are mere fictions, that have no exist- 
ence. [244] They have told us, that, by the 
ideas which we have immediately from our 
senses, they mean our sensations.* These, 
indeed, are real things, and not fictions. 
We may, by accurate attention to them, 
know perfectly their nature ; and, if philo- 
sophers would keep by this meaning of the 
word idea, when applied to the objects of 
sense, they would at least be more intelli- 
gible. Let us hear how Mr Locke explains 
the nature of those ideas, when applied to 
primary and secondary qualities, Book 2, 
chap 8, § 7j tenth edition. " To discover 
the nature of our ideas the better, and to 
discourse of them intelligibly, it will be con- 
venient to distinguish them, as they are 
ideas, or perceptions in our minds, and as 
they are modifications of matter in the bodies 
that cause such perceptions in us, that so 
we may not think (as perhaps usually is 
done) that they are exactly the images and 
resemblances of something inherent in the 
subject ; most of those of sensation being, 
in the mind, no more the likeness of some- 
thing existing without us, than the names 
that stand for them are the likeness of our 
ideas, which yet, upon hearing, they are apt 
to excite in us." 

This way of distinguishing a thing, first, 
as what it is ; and, secondly, as what it is 
not, is, I apprehend, a very extraordinary 
way of discovering its nature.-f- And if ideas 
are ideas or perceptions in our minds, and, 
at the same time, the modifications of mat- 
ter in the bodies that cause such percep- 
tions in us, it will be no easy matter to 
discourse of them intelligibly. 

The discovery of the nature of ideas is 
carried on in the next section, in a manner 
no less extraordinary. " Whatsoever the 
mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate 
object of perception, thought, or under- 
standing, that I call idea ; and the power 
to produce any idea in our mind, I call 
quality of the subject wherein that power 
is. Thus, a snowball having the power to 
produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and 
round — the powers to produce those ideas 



• The Cartesians, particularly Malebranche, dis- 
tinguished the Idea and the Feeling (sentiment, se7isa- 
tio.) Of the primary qualities in their doctrine we 
have Ideas ; of the secondary, only Feelings.— H. 

t This and some of the following strictures on 
Locke are*rather hypercritical— H. 
[244-246] 



in us, as they are in the snowball, I call 
qualities ; and, as they are sensations, or 
perceptions in our understandings, I call 
them ideas ; which ideas, if I speak of 
them sometimes as in the things themselves, 
I would be understood to mean those quali- 
ties in the objects which produce them in 
us." [245] 

These are the distinctions which Mr 
Locke thought convenient, in order to dis- 
cover the nature of our ideas of the quali- 
ties of matter the better, and to discourse 
of them intelligibly. I believe it will be 
difficult to find two other paragraphs in the 
essay so unintelligible. Whether this is to be 
imputed to the intractable nature of ideas, 
or to an oscitancy of the author, with which 
he is very rarely chargeable, I leave the 
reader to judge. There are, indeed, seve- 
ral other passages in the same chapter, in 
which a like obscurity appears ; but I do 
not chuse to dwell upon them. The con- 
clusion drawn by him from the whole is, 
that primary and secondary qualities are 
distinguished by this, that the ideas of the 
former are resemblances or copies of them, 
but the ideas of the other are not resem- 
blances of them. Upon this doctrine, I beg 
leave to make two observations. 

First, Taking it for granted that, by the 
ideas of primary and secondary qualities, 
he means the sensations' they excite in us, 
I observe that it appears strange, that a^ 
sensation should be the idea of a quality in 
body, to which it is acknowledged to bear 
no resemblance. If the sensation of sound 
be the idea of that vibration of the sound- 
ing body which occasions it, a surfeit may, 
for the same reason, be the idea of a feast. 

A second observation is, that, when Mr 
Locke affirms, that the ideas of primary 
qualities — that is, the sensations* they raise 
in us — are resemblances of those qualities, 
he seems neither to have given due atten- 
tion to those sensations, nor to the nature 
of sensation in general. [246] 

Let a man press his hand against a hard 
body, and let him attend to the sensation 
he feels, excluding from his thought every 
thing external, even the body that is the 
cause of his feeling. This abstraction, in- 
deed, is difficult, and seems to have been 
little, if at all practised. But it is not im- 
possible, and it is evidently the only way to 
understand the nature of the sensation. A 
due attention to this sensation will satisfy 



* Here, as formerly, (vide supra, notes at pp. 208, 
290, &c.,) Reid will insist on giving a more limited 
meaning to the term Sensation than Locke did, and 
on criticising him by that imposed meaning. The 
Sensation of Locke was equivalent to the Sensation 
and Perception of Reid. It is to be observed that 
Locke did not, like the Cartesians, distinguish the 
Idea (corresponding to Reid's Perception) from the 
Feeling (sentiment, sen6::tio) corresponding to Reid'i 
Sensation. — H. 



318 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II 



him that it is no more like hardness in a 
body than the sensation of sound is like 
vibration in the sounding body. 

I know of no ideas but my conceptions ; 
and my idea of hardness in a body, is the 
conception of such a cohesion of its parts 
as requires great force to displace them. I 
have both the conception and belief of this 
quality in the body, at the same time that 
I have the sensation of pain, by pressing 
my hand against it. The sensation and 
perception are closely conjoined by my 
constitution ; but I am sure they have no 
similitude ; I know no reason why the one 
should be called the idea of the other, which 
does not lead us to call every natural effect 
the idea of its cause. 

Neither did Mr Locke give due attention 
to the nature of sensation in general, when 
he affirmed that the ideas of primary qua- 
lities — that is, the sensations* excited 
by them— are resemblances of those quali- 
ties. 

That there can be nothing like sensation 
in an insentient being, or like thought in 
an unthinking being, is self-evident, and 
has been shewn, to the conviction of all 
men that think, by Bishop Berkeley ; yet 
this was unknown to Mr Locke. It is an 
humbling consideration, that, in subjects of 
this kind, self-evident truths may be hid 
from the eyes of the most ingenious men. 
But we have, withal, this consolation, that, 
when once discovered, they shine by their 
own light : and that light can no more be 
put out. [247] 

Upon the whole, Mr Locke, in making 
secondary qualities to be powers in bodies 
to excite certain sensations in us, has given 
a just and distinct analysis of what our 
senses discover concerning them ; but, in 
applying the theory of ideas to them and 
to the primary qualities, he has been led to 
say things that darken the subject, and that 
will not bear examination. -|- 

Bishop Berkeley having adopted the sen- 
timents common to philosophers, concern- 
ing the ideas we have by our senses — to wit, 
that they are all sensations — saw more clearly 
the necessary consequence of this doctrine ; 
which is, that there is no material world — 
bo qualities primary or secondary — and, 
consequently, no foundation for any dis- 
tinction between them.:}: He exposed the 
absurdity of a resemblance between our 



* No ; not Sensations in Reid's meaning ; but Per- 
cepts—the immediate objects we are conscious of in 
the cognitions of sense. — H. 

1 The Cartesians did not apply the term ideas to 
our sensations of the secondary qualities. — H. 

% See above, p. 142, note *. The mere distinction 
of primary and secondary qualities, of perception and 
sensation, is of no importance against Idealism, if the 
primary qualities as immediately percewed. (i e. as 
known to consciousness,) be only conceptions, no- 
tions, or modifications of mind itselt. See following 
Note— H. 



sensations and any quality, primary or 
secondary, of a substance that is supposed 
to be insentient. Indeed, if it is granted 
that the senses have no other office but to 
furnish us with sensations, it will be found 
impossible to make any distinction between 
primary and secondary qualities, or even to 
maintain the existence of a material world. 

From the account I have given of the 
various revolutions in the opinions of philo- 
sophers about primary and secondary qua- 
lities, I think it appears that all the dark- 
ness and intricacy that thinking men have 
found in this subject, and the errors they 
have fallen into, have been owing to the 
difficulty of distinguishing clearly sensa- 
tion from perception — what we feel from 
what we perceive. 

The external senses have a double pro- 
vince — to make us feel, and to make us 
perceive. They furnish us with a variety 
of sensations, some pleasant, others painful, 
and others indifferent ; at the same time, 
they give us a conception and an invincible 
belief of the existence of external objects. 
This conception of external objects is the 
work of nature. The belief of their exist- 
ence, which our senses give, is the work of 
nature ; so likewise is the sensation that 
accompanies it. This conception and be- 
lief which nature produces by means of the 
senses, we call perception.* [248] The 
feeling which goes along with the percep- 
tion, we call sensation. The perception and 
its corresponding sensation are produced at 
the same time. In our experience we never 
find them disjoined. Hence, we are led to 
consider them as one thing, to give them 
one name, and to confound their different 
attributes. It becomes very difficult to 
separate them in thought, to attend to each 
by itself, and to attribute nothing to it 
which belongs to the other. 

To do this, requires a degree of attention 
to what passes in our own minds, and a 
talent of distinguishing things that differ, 
which is not to be expected in the vulgar, 
and is even rarely found in philosophers ; 
so that the progress made in a just analysis 
of the operations of our senses has been 
very slow. The hypothesis of ideas, so 
generally adopted, hath, as I apprehend, 
greatly retarded this progress, and we might 
hope for a quicker advance, if philosophers 
could so far humble themselves as to be- 
lieve that, in every branch of the philosophy 
of nature, the productions of human fancy 
and conjecture will be found to be dross ; 
and that the only pure metal that will en. 
dure the test, is what is discovered by 
patient observation and chaste induction. 



* If the conception, like the belief, be subjective 
in perception, we have no refuge. from Idealism in 
this doctrine. See above, the notes at pp. 128-130, 
183, &c, and NoteC— H. 

[247, 248] 



chap, xviii.] OF OTHER OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION. 



319 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

OF OTHER OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION. 

Besides primary and secondary qualities 
of bodies, there are many other immediate 
objects of perception. Without pretending 
to a complete enumeration, I think they 
mostly fall under one or other of the follow- 
ing, classes. 1st, Certain states or condi- 
tions of our own bodies. 2d, Mechanical 
powers or forces. 3d, Chemical powers. 
4th, Medical powers of virtues. 5th, Vege- 
table and animal powers. [249] 

That we perceive certain disorders in our 
own bodies by means of uneasy sensations, 
which nature hath conjoined with them, will 
not be disputed. Of this kind are toothache, 
headache, gout, and every distemper and 
hurt which we feel. The notions which 
our sense gives of these, have a strong 
analogy to our notions of secondary qualities. 
Both are similarly compounded, and may 
be similarly resolved, and they give light to 
each other. 

In the toothache, for instance, there is, 
first,, a painful feeling ; and, secondly, a 
conception and belief of some disorder in 
the tooth, which is believed to be the cause 
of the uneasy feeling.* The first of these 
is a sensation, the second is perception ; 
for it includes a conception and belief of an 
external object. But these two things, 
though of different natures, are so con- 
stantly conjoined in our experience and in 
our imagination, that we consider them as 
one. We give the same name to both ; for 
the toothache is the proper name of the 
pain we feel ; and it is the proper name of 
the disorder in the tooth which causes that 
pain. If it should be made a question 
whether the toothache be in the mind that 
feels it, or in the tooth that is affected, 
much might be said on both sides, while it 
is not observed that the word has two mean- 
ings, -f* But a little reflection satisfies us, 
that the pain is in the mind, and the dis- 
order in the tooth. If some philosopher 
should pretend to have made the discovery 
that the toothache, the gout, the headache, 
are only sensations in the mind, and that 
it is a vulgar error to conceive that they 
are distempers of the body, he might defend 
his system in the same manner as those 
who affirm that there is no sound, nor 
colour, nor taste in bodies, defend that para- 
dox. But both these systems, like most 



* There is no such perception, properly so called. 
The cognition is merely an inference from the 
feeling; and it subject, at least, only some hypothe- 
tical representation of a really ignotum quid. Here 
the subjective element preponderates so greatly as 
almost to extinguish the objective — H. 

+ This is not correct. See above, p. 205, col. b 
note *, and Note D.—H. 



[249, 250] 



paradoxes, will be found to be only an abuse 
of words. 

We say that we feci the toothache, not 
that we perceive it. On the other hand, we 
say that we perceive the colour of a body, 
not that we feel it. Can any reason be given 
for this difference of phraseology ? [250] 
In answer to this question, I apprehend 
that, both when we feel the toothache and 
when we see a coloured body, there is sensa- 
tion and perception conjoined. But, in the 
toothache, the sensation being very painful, 
engrosses the attention ; and therefore we 
speak of it as if it were felt only, and not 
perceived : whereas, in seeing a coloured 
body, the sensation is indifferent, and draws 
no attention. The quality in the body, 
which we call its colour, is the only object 
of attention ; and therefore we speak of it 
as if it were perceived and not felt. Though 
all philosophers agree that, in seeing colour 
there is sensation, it is not easy to persuade 
the vulgar that, in seeing a coloured body, 
when the light is not too strong nor the 
eye inflamed, they have any sensation or 
feeling at all. 

There are some sensations, which, though 
they are very often felt, are never attended 
to, nor reflected upon. We have no con- 
ception of them ; and, therefore, in language 
there is neither any name for them, nor 
any form of speech that supposes their 
existence. Such are the sensations of colour, 
and of all primary qualities ; and, therefore, 
those qualities are said to be perceived, but 
not to be felt. Taste and smell, and heat 
and cold, have sensations that are often 
agreeable or disagreeable, in such a degree 
as to draw our attention ; and they are 
sometimes said to be felt, and sometimes to 
be perceived. When disorders of the body 
occasion very acute pain, the uneasy sensa- 
ation engrosses the attention, and they are 
said to be felt, not to be perceived.* 

There is another question relating to 
phraseology, which this subject suggests. 
A man says, he feels pain in such a parti, 
cular part of his body ; in his toe for in- 
stance. Now, reason assures us that pain 
being a sensation, can only be in the sen- 
tient being, as its subject- — that is, in the 
mind. And, though philosophers have dis- 
puted much about the place of the mind ; 
yet none of them ever placed it in the toe.-f- 

* As already repeatedly observed, the objective 
element (perception) and the subjective element 
(feeling, sensation) are always in the inverse ratio 
of each other. This is a law of which Reid and the 
philosophers were not aware. — H. 

t Not in the toe-exclusively. But, both in ancient 
and modern times, the opinion has been held that 
the mind has as much a local presence in the toe as in 
the head, the doctrine, indeed, -longgenerally main- 
tained was, that, in relation to the body, thesoulis all 
in the whole, and all in every part. On the question of 
the seat of the soul, which has been marvellously 
perplexed, I cannot enter. I shall only say, in gene- 
ral, that the first condition of the possibility of an 



320 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[ESSAY 12 



What shall we say then in this case ? Do 
our senses really deceive us, and make us 
believe a thing which our reason determines 
to be impossible? [251] I answer, first, 
That, when a man says he has pain in his toe, 
he is perfectly understood, both by himself 
and those who hear him. This is all that 
he intends. He really feels what he and 
all men call a pain in the toe ; and there is 
no deception in the matter. Whether, 
therefore, there be any impropriety in the 
phrase or not, is of no consequence in com- 
mon life. It answers all the ends of speech, 
both to the speaker and the hearers. 

In all languages there are phrases which 
have a distinct meaning; while, at the 
same time, there may be something in the 
structure of them that disagrees with the 
analogy of grammar or with the principles 
of philosophy. And the reason is, because 
language is not made either by gramma- 
rians or philosophers. Thus, we speak of 
feeling pain, as if pain was something dis- 
tinct from the feeling of it. We speak of 
pain coming and going, and removing from 
one place to another. Such phrases are 
meant by those who use them in a sense 
that is neither obscure nor false. But the 
philosopher puts them into his alembic, 
reduces them to their first principles, draws 
out of them a sense that was never meant, 
and so imagines that he has discovered an 
error of the vulgar. 

I observe, secondly, That, when we con- 
sider the sensation of pain by itself, with- 
out any respect to its cause, we cannot say 
with propriety, that the toe is either the 
place or the subject of it. But it ought to 
be remembered, that, when we speak of pain 
in the toe, the sensation is combined in our 
thought, with the cause of it, which really is 
in the toe. The cause and the eifect are 
combined in one complex notion, and the 
same name serves for both. It is the busi- 
ness of the philosopher to analyse this com- 
plex notion, and to give different names to 
its different ingredients. He gives the 
name of pain to the sensation only, and the 
name of disorder to the unknown cause of 
it. Then it is evident that the disorder 
only is in the toe, and that it would be an 
error to think that the pain is in it.* But 
we ought not to ascribe this error to the 
vulgar, who never made the distinction, and 
who, under the name of pain, comprehend 
both the sensation and its cause. -|* [252] 



immediate, intuitive, or real perception of external 
things, which our consciousness assures that we pos- 
sess, is the immediate connection of the cognitive 
principle with every part of the corporeal organism. — 

* Only if the toe be considered as a mere material 
mass, and apart from an animating principle.— H. 

t That the pain is where it is felt is, however, the 
doctrine of common sense. We only feel in as much 
as we have a body and a soul ; we only feel pain in 
the toe in as much as we have such a member, and in 



Cases sometimes happen, which give 
occasion even to the vulgar to distinguish 
the painful sensation from the disorder 
which is the cause of it. A man who has had 
his leg cut off, many years after feels pain 
in a toe of that leg. The toe has now no 
existence ; and he perceives easily, that the 
toe can neither be the place nor the subject 
of the pain which he feels ; yet it is the 
same feeling he used to have from a hurt 
in the toe ; and, if he did not know that his 
leg was cut off, it would give him the same 
immediate conviction of some hurt or dis- 
order in the toe.* 

The same phenomenon may lead the 
philosopher, in all cases, to distinguish sens- 
ation from perception. We say, that the 
man had a deceitful feeling, when he felt a 
pain in his toe after the leg was cut off; 
and we have a true meaning in saying so. 
But, if we will speak accurately, our sensa- 
tions cannot be deceitful ; they must be 
what we feel them to be, and can be no- 
thing else. Where, then, lies the deeeit ? I 
answer, it lies not in the sensation, which 
is real, but in the seeming perception he 
had of a disorder in his toe. This percep- 
tion, which Nature had conjoined with the 
sensation, was, in this instance, fallacious. 

The same reasoning may be applied to 
every phenomenon that can, with propriety, 
be called a deception of sense. As when 
one who has the jaundice sees a body 
yellow, which is really white ;-f- or when a 
man sees an object double, because his 
eyes are not both directed to it : in these, 
and other like cases, the sensations we have 
are real, and the deception is only in the 
perception which nature has annexed to 
them. 

Nature has connected our perception of 
external objects with certain sensations. 
If the sensation is produced, the corre- 
sponding perception follows even when there 
is no object, and in that case is apt to 
deceive us. [253] In like manner, nature 
has connected our sensations with certain 
impressions that are made upon the nerves 
and brain ; and, when the impression is 
made, from whatever cause, the corre- 
sponding sensation and perception imme- 
diately follow. Thus, in the man who feels 
pain in his toe after the leg is cut off, the 
nerve that went to the toe, part of which was 
cut off with the leg, had the same impres- 
sion made upon the remaining part, which, 
in the natural state of his body, was caused 



as much as the mind, or sentient principle, pervades 
it. We just as much feel in the toe as we think in 
in the head. If (but only if) the latter be a vitium 
subreptionit, as Kant thinks, so is the former.— H. 

* This illustration is Des Cartes'. If correct, it 
only shews that the connection of mind with organ- 
ization extends from the centre to the circumference 
of the nervous system, and is not limited to any 
part.— H. 

1 The man does not see the white body at all.— H. 



[251-253] 



chap, xvm.] OF OTHER OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION. 



321 



by a hurt in the toe : and immediately this 
impression is followed by the sensation and 
perception which nature connected with it.* 

In like manner, if the same impressions 
which are made at present upon my optic 
nerves by the objects before me, could be 
made in the dark, I apprehend that I 
should have the same sensations and see 
the same objects which I now see. The im- 
pressions and sensations would in such a case 
be real, and the perception only fallacious.* 

Let us next consider the notions which 
our senses give us of those attributes of 
bodies called powers. This is the more 
necessary, because power seems to imply 
some activity ; yet we consider body as a 
dead inactive thing, which does not act, but 
may be acted upon. 

Of the mechanical powers ascribed to 
bodies, that which is called their vis insita 
or inertia, may first be considered. By 
this is meant, no more than that bodies 
never change their state of themselves, 
either from rest to motion, or from motion 
to rest, or from one degree of velocity or 
one direction to another. In order to 
produce any such change, there must be 
some force impressed upon them ; and the 
eha'ige produced is precisely proportioned 
to the force impressed, and in the direction 
of that force. 

That all bodies have this property, is a 
matter of fact, which we learn from daily 
observation, as well as from the most accu- 
rate experiments.. [254] Now, it seems 
plain, that this does not imply any activity 
in body, but rather the contrary. A power 
in body to change its state, would much 
rather imply activity than its continuing in 
the same state : so that, although this 
property of bodies is called their vis insita, 
or vis imrlice, it implies no proper activity. 

If we consider, next, the power of gravity, 
it is a fact that all the bodies of our pla- 
netary system gravitate towards each other. 
This has been fully proved by the great 
Newton. But this gravitation is not con- 
ceived by that philosopher to be a power 
inherent in bodies, which they exert of 
themselves, but a force impressed upon 
them, to which they must necessarily yield. 
Whether this force be impressed by some 
subtile aether, or whether it be impressed by 
the power of the Supreme Being, or of some 
subordinate spiritual being, we do not know ; 
but all sound natural philosophy, particu- 
larly that of Newton, supposes it to be an 
impressed force, and not inherent in bodies, -f 

So that, when bodies gravitate, they do 



* This is a doctrine which cannot be reconciled 
with that of an intuitive or objective perception. 
AW here is subjective. — H. 

f That all activity supposes an immaterial or spi- 
ritual agent, is an ancient doctrine. It is, however, 
only an hypothesis. — H. 
[ aS4-«5tf] 



not properly act, but are acted upon : they 
only yield to an impression that is made 
upon them. It is common in language to 
express, by active verbs, many changes in 
things wherein they are merely passive : 
and this way of speaking is used chiefly 
when the cause of the change is not obvious 
to sense. Thus we say that a ship sails, 
when every man of common sense knows 
that she has no inherent power of motion 
and is only driven by wind and tide. In 
like manner, when we say that the planets 
gravitate towards the sun, we mean no more 
but that, by some unknown power, they are 
drawn or impelled in that direction. 

What has been said of the power of Gra- 
vitation may be applied to other mechanical 
powers, such as cohesion, magnetism, elec- 
tricity ; and no less to chemical and medical 
powers. By all these, certain effects are 
produced, upon the application of one body 
to another. [255] Our senses discover the 
effect ; but the power is latent. We know 
there must be a cause of the effect, and we 
form a relative notion of it from its effect ; and 
very often the same name is used to signify 
the unknown cause, and the known effect. 

We ascribe to vegetables the powers of 
drawing nourishment, growing and multi- 
plying their kind. Here likewise the effect 
is manifest, but the cause is latent to sense. 
These powers, therefore, as well as all the 
other powers we ascribe to bodies, are un- 
known causes of certain known effects. It 
is the business of philosophy to investigate 
the nature of those powers as far as we are 
able ; but our senses leave us in the dark. 

We may observe a great similarity in the 
notions which our senses give us of second- 
ary qualities, of the disorders we feel in our 
own bodies, and of the various powers of 
bodies which we have enumerated. They 
are all obscure and relative notions, being 
a conception of some unknown cause of a 
known effect. Their names are, for the 
most part, common to the effect and to 
its cause ; and they are a proper subject 
of philosophical disquisition. They might, 
therefore, I think, not improperly be called 
occult qualities. 

This name, indeed, is fallen into disgrace 
since the time of Des Cartes. It is said to 
have been used by the Peripatetics to cloak 
their ignorance, and to stop all inquiry into 
the nature of those qualities called occult. 
Be it so. Let those answer for this abuse 
of the word who were guilty of it. To call a 
thing occult, if we attend to the meaning 
of the word, is rather modestly to confess 
ignorance, than to cloak it. It is to point 
it out as a proper subject for the investiga- 
tion of philosophers, whose proper business 
it is to better the condition of humanity, by 
discovering what was before hid from human 
knowledge. [256] 



322 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



Were I therefore to make a division of 
the qualities of bodies as they appear to our 
senses, I would divide them first into those 
that are manifest and those that are occult. 
The manifest qualities are those which Mr 
Locke calls primary ,• such as Extension, 
Figure, Divisibility, Motion, Hardness, 
Softness, Fluidity. The nature of these is 
manifest even to sense : and the business of 
the philosopher with regard to them, is not 
to find out their nature, which is well known, 
but to discover the effects produced by their 
various combinations ; and, with regard to 
those of them which are not essential to 
matter, to discover their causes as far as 
he is able. 

The second class consists of occult quali- 
ties, which may be subdivided into various 
kinds : as, first, the secondary qualities ; 
secondly, the disorders we feel in our own 
bodies ; and, thirdly, all the qualities which 
we call powers of bodies, whether mechani- 
cal, chemical, medical, animal, or vegetable; 
or if there be any other powers not compre- 
hended under these heads. Of all these the 
existence is manifest to sense, but the nature 
is occult ; and here the philosopher has an 
ample field. 

What is necessary for the conduct of our 
animal life, the bountiful Author of Nature 
hath made manifest to all men. But there 
are many other choice secrets of Nature, 
the discovery of which enlarges the power 
and exalts the state of man. These are left 
to be discovered by the proper use of our 
rational powers. They are hid, not that 
they may be always concealed from human 
knowledge, but that we may be excited to 
search for them. This is the proper busi- 
ness of a philosopher, and it is the glory of 
a man, and the best reward of his labour, 
to discover what Nature has thus con- 
cealed. [257] 



CHAPTER XIX. 

OF MATTER AND OF SPACE. 

The objects of sense we have hitherto 
considered are qualities. But qualities must 
have a subject. We give the names of 
matter, material substance, and bod;:, to the 
subject of sensible qualities ; and it may be 
asked what this mat er is. 

I perceive in a billiard ball, figure, colour, 
and motion ; but the ball is not figure, nor 
is it colour, nor motion, nor all these taken 
together ; it is something that has figure, 
and colour, and motion. This is a dictate 
of nature, and the belief of all mankind. 

As to the nature of this something, I am 
afraid we can give little account of it, but 
that it has the qualities which our senses 
discover. 



But how do we know that they are qua- 
lities, and cannot exist without a subject ? 
I confess I cannot explain how we know 
that they cannot exist without a subject, 
any more than I can explain how we know 
that they exist. We have the information 
of nature for their existence ; and I think 
we have the information of nature that they 
are qualities. 

The belief that figure, motion, and colour 
are qualities, and require a subject, must 
either be a judgment of nature, or it must 
be discovered by reason, or it must be a 
prejudice that has no just foundation. There 
are philosophers who maintain that it is a 
mere prejudice ; that a body is nothing but 
a collection of what we call sensible quali- 
ties ; and that they neither have nor need 
any subject. This is the opinion of Bishop 
Berkeley and Mr Hume; and they were 
led to it by finding that they had not in 
their minds any idea of substance. [258] 
It could neither be an idea of sensation nor 
of reflection. 

But to me nothing seems more absurd 
than that there should be extension without 
anything extended, or motion without any- 
thing moved ; yet I cannot give reasons for 
my opinion, because it seems to me self- 
evident, and an immediate dictate of my 
nature. 

And that it is the belief of all mankind, 
appears in the structure of all languages ; 
in which we find adjective nouns used to 
express sensible qualities. It is well known 
that every adjective in language must belong 
to some substantive expressed or under- 
stood — that is, every quality must belong 
to some subject. 

Sensible qualities make so great a part of 
the furniture of our minds, their kinds are 
so many, and their number so great, that, 
if prejudice, and not nature, teach us to 
ascribe them all to a subject, it must have 
a great work to perform, which cannot be 
accomplished in a short time, nor carried 
on to the same pitch in every individual. 
We should find not individuals only, but 
nations and ages, differing from each other 
in the progress which this prejudice had 
made in their sentiments ; but we find no 
such difference among men. What one man 
accounts a quality, all men do, and ever did. 

It seems, therefore, to be a judgment of 
nature, that the things immediately per- 
ceived are qualities, which must belong to 
a subject ; and all the information that our 
senses give us about this subject, is, that 
it is that to which such qualities belong. 
From this it is evident, that our notion of 
body or matter, as distinguished from its 
qualities, is a relative notion;* and I am 



* That is— our notion of absolute body is relative. 
This is incorrectly expressed. We can know, we can 

[257, 258] 



P. XIX. ] 



OF MATTER AND OF SPACE. 



323 



afraid it must always be obscure until men 
have other faculties. [259] 

The philosopher, in this, seems to have 
no advantage above the vulgar ; for, as 
they perceive colour, and figure, and motion 
by their senses as well he does, and both 
are equally certain that there is a subject 
of those qualities, so the notions which 
both have of this subject are equally ob- 
scure. When the philosopher calls it a 
substratum, and a subject of inhesion, those 
learned words convey no meaning but what 
every man understands and expresses, by 
saying, in common language, that it is a 
thing extended, and solid, and movable. 

The relation which sensible qualities bear 
to their subject — that is, to body — is not, 
however, so dark but that it is easily dis- 
tinguished from all other relations. Every 
man can distinguish it from the relation 
of an effect to its cause ; of a mean to its 
end ; or of a sign to the thing signified by 
it. 

I think it requires some ripeness of un- 
derstanding to distinguish the qualities of a 
body from the body. Perhaps this dis- 
tinction is not made by brutes, nor by in- 
fants ; and if any one thinks that this dis- 
tinction is not made by our senses, but by 
some other power of the mind, I will not 
dispute this point, provided it be granted 
that men, when their faculties are ripe, 
have a natural conviction that sensible qua- 
lities cannot exist by themselves without 
some subject to which they belong. 

I think, indeed, that some of the determ- 
inations we form concerning matter can- 
not be deduced solely from the testimony 
of sense, but must be referred to some other 
source. 

There seems to be nothing more evident 
than that all bodies must consist of parts ; 
and that every part of a body is a body, and 
a distinct being, which may exist without the 
other parts ; and yet I apprehend this con- 
clusion is not deduced solely from the testi- 
mony of sense : for, besides that it is a 
necessary truth, and, therefore, no object 
of sense,* there is a limit beyond which we 



conceive, only what is relative. Our knowledge of 
qualities or jihcenomena is necessarily relative ; for 
these exist only as they exist in relation to our facul- 
ties. The knowledge, or even the conception, of a 
substance in itself, and apart from any qualities in 
relation to, and therefore cognisable or conceivable 
by, our minds, involves a contradiction. Of such we 
can form only a negative notion ; that is, we can 
merely conceive it as inconceivable. But to call this ne- 
gative notion a relative notion, is wrong ; 1°, because 
all our (positive) notions are relative ; and '<s°, because 
this is itself a negative notion — i. e., no notion at all — 
simply because there is no relation. The same im- 
proper application of the term relative was also made 
by Reid when speaking of the secondary qualities. — H, 
* It is creditable to Reid that he perceived that 
the quality of necessity is the criterion which distin- 
guishes native from adventitious notions cr judg- 
ments. He did not, however, always make the proper 
use of it. Leibnitz has the honour of first explicitly 
enouncing this criterion, and Kant of first fully ap- 
[259-261] 



cannot perceive any division of a body. 
The parts become too small to be perceived 
by our senses ; but we cannot believe that 
it becomes then incapable of being farther 
divided, or that such division would make 
it not to be a body. [260] 

We carry on the division and subdivision 
in our thought far beyond the reach of our 
senses, and we can find no end to it : nay, 
I think we plainly discern that there can 
be no limit beyond which the division can- 
not be carried. 

For, if there be any limit to this division, 
one of two things must necessarily happen : 
either we have come by division to a body 
which is extended, but has no parts, and is 
absolutely indivisible ; or this body is divi- 
sible, but, as soon as it is divided, it becomes 
no body. Both these positions seem to me 
absurd, and one or the other is the neces- 
sary consequence of supposing a limit to the 
divisibility of matter. 

On the other hand, if it is admitted that 
the divisibility of matter has no limit, it 
will follow that no body can be called one 
individual substance. You may as well 
call it two, or twenty, or two hundred. For, 
when it is divided into parts, every part is 
a being or substance distinct from all the 
other parts, and was so even before the di- 
vision. Any one part may continue to 
exist, though all the other parts were an- 
nihilated. 

There is, indeed, a principle long re- 
ceived as an axiom in metaphysics, which 
I cannot reconcile to the divisibility of mat- 
ter ; it is, that every being is one, omne ens 
est iinum. By which, I suppose, is meant, 
that everything that exists must either be 
one indivisible being, or composed of a de- 
terminate number of indivisible beings. 
Thus, an army may be divided into regi- 
ments, a regiment into companies, and a 
company into men. But here the division 
has its limit ; for you cannot divide a man 
without destroying him, because he is an 
individual; and everything, according to 
this axiom, must be an individual, or made 
up of individuals. [261] 

That this axiom will hold with regard to 
an army, and with regard to many other 
things, must be granted ; but I require the 
evidence of its being applicable to all beings 
whatsoever. 

Leibnitz, conceiving that all beings must 
have this metaphysical unity, was by this 
led to maintain that matter, and, indeed, 
the whole universe, is made up of monads — 
that is, simple and indivisible substances. 

Perhaps, the same apprehension might 
lead Boscovich into his hypothesis, which 
seems much more ingenious — to wit, that 

plying it to the phenomena. In none has Kant been 
more successful than in this under consideration.— 
H. 

y 2 



324 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



matter is composed of a definite number of 
mathematical points, endowed with certain 
powers of attraction and repulsion. 

The divisibility of matter without any 
limit, seems to me more tenable than either 
of these hypotheses ; nor do I lay much 
stress upon the metaphysical axiom, con- 
sidering its origin. Metaphysicians thought 
proper to make the attributes common to 
all beings the subject of a science. It 
must be a matter of some difficulty to find 
out such attributes ; and, after racking 
their invention, they have specified three — 
to wit, Unity, Verity, and Goodness ; and 
these, I suppose, have been invented to 
make a number, rather than from any clear 
evidence of their being universal. 

There are other determinations concern- 
ing matter, which, I think, are not solely 
founded upon the testimony of sense : such 
as, that it is impossible that two bodies 
should occupy the same place at the same 
time ; or that the same body should be in 
different places at the same time ; or that 
a body can be moved from one place to 
another, without passing through the inter- 
mediate places, either in a straight course, 
or by some circuit. These appear to be 
necessary truths, and therefore cannot be 
conclusions of our senses ; for our senses 
testify only what is, and not what must ne- 
cessarily be.* [262] 

We are next to consider our notion of 
Space. It may be observed that, although 
space be not perceived by any of our senses 
when all matter is removed, yet, when we 
perceive any of the primary qualities, space 
presents itself as a necessary concomitant ;-f- 
for there can neither be extension nor mo- 
tion, nor figure nor division, nor cohesion 
of parts, without space. 

There are only two of our senses by which 
the notion of space enters into the mind — 
to wit, touch and sight. If we suppose a 
man to have neither of these senses, I do 
not see how he could ever have any concep- 
tion of space.:): Supposing him to have 
both, until he sees or feels other objects, 
he can have no notion of space. It has 
neither colour nor figure to make it an 
object of sight : it has no tangible quality 
to make it an object of touch. But other 
objects of sight and touch carry the notion 
of space along with them ; and not the 
notion only, but the belief of it ; for a body 
could not exist if there was no space to con- 
tain it. It could not move if there was 
no space. Its situation, its distance, and 
every relation it has to other bodies, suppose 
space. 

But, though the notion of space seems 

* See last note.— H. 
t See above, p. 12+, note +.— H. 
X Vide supra, p. 123, col. b, notes *, t : and p. 
126, col b, note* H, 



not to enter, at first, into the mind, until it 
is introduced by the proper objects of sense, 
yet, being once introduced, it remains in 
our conception and belief, though the objects 
which introduced it be removed. We see 
no absurdity in supposing a body to be an- 
nihilated ; but the space that contained it 
remains ; and, to suppose that annihilated, 
seems to be absurd. It is so much allied 
to nothing or emptiness, that it seems in- 
capable of annihilation or of creation.* 

Space not only retains a firm hold of our 
belief, even when we suppose all the objects 
that introduced it to be annihilated, but it 
swells to immensity. We can set no limits 
to it, either of extent or of duration. Hence 
we call it immense, eternal, immovable, 
and indestructible. But it is only an im- 
mense, eternal, immovable, and indestruc- 
tible void or emptiness. Perhaps we may 
apply to it what the Peripatetics said of 
their first matter, that, whatever it is, it is 
potentially only, not actually. [2G3] 

When we consider parts of space that 
have measure and figure, there is nothing 
we understand better, nothing about which 
we can reason so clearly, and to so great 
extent. Extension and figure are circum- 
scribed parts of space, and are the object of 
geometry, a science in which human reason 
has the most ample field, and can go deeper, 
and with more certainty, than in any other. 
But, when we attempt to comprehend the 
whole of space, and to trace it to its origin, 
we lose ourselves in the search. The pro- 
found speculations of ingenious men upon 
this subject differ so widely as may lead 
us to suspect that the line of human under- 
standing is too short to reach the bottom 
of it. 

Bishop Berkeley, I think, was the first 
who observed that the extension, figure, and 
space, of which we speak in common lan- 
guage, and of which geometry treats, are 
originally perceived by the sense of touch 
only ; but that there is a notion of exten- 
sion, figure, and space, which may be got 
by sight, without any aid from touch. To 
distinguish these, he calls the first tangible 
extension, tangible figure, and tangible 
space. The last he calls visible. 

As I think this distinction very import- 
ant in the philosophy of our senses, I shall 
adopt the names used by the inventor to 
express it ; remembering what has been 
already observed — that space, whether tan- 
gible or visible, is not so properly an object 
of sense, as a necessary concomitant of the 
objects both of sight and touch. -f- 



* His doctrine of space is an example of Reid's 
imperfect application of the criterion of necessity. 
Seep. 123, note f- If seemingly required but little to 
rise to Kant's view of the conception of space, as an 
a priori or native form of thought.— H. 

t See above, p. 124, note f. — H. 

[262, 263] 



XIX.] 



OF MATTER AND OF SPACE. 



25 



The reader may likewise be pleased to 
attend to this, that, when I use the names of 
tangible and visible space, I do not mean to 
adopt Bishop Berkeley's opinion, so far as 
to think that they are really different things, 
and altogether unlike. I take them to be 
different conceptions of the same thing ; 
the one very partial, and the other more 
complete ; but both distinct and just, as far 
as they reach. [2C4] 

Thus, when I see a spire at a very great 
distance, it seems like the point of a bodkin ; 
there appears no vane at the top, no angles. 
But, when I view the same object at a small 
distance, I see a huge pyramid of several 
angles, with a vane on the top. Neither 
of these apj e.irances is fallacious. Each of 
them is what it ought to be, and what it 
must be, from such an object seen at such 
different distances. These different appear- 
ances of the same object may serve to illus- 
trate the different conceptions of space, 
according as they are drawn from the in- 
formation of sight alone, or as they are 
drawn from the additional information of 
touch. 

Our sight alone, unaided by touch, gives 
a very partial notion of space, but yet a 
distiuct one. When it is considered accord- 
ing to this partial notion, I call it visible 
space. The sense of touch gives a much 
more complete notion of space ; and, when 
it is considered according to this notion, I 
call it tangible space. Perhaps there may 
be intelligent beings of a higher order, whose 
conceptions of space are much more com- 
plete than those we have from both senses. 
Another sense added to those of sight and 
touch, might, for what I know, give us con- 
ceptions of space as different from those we 
can now attain as tangible space is from 
visible, and might resolve many knotty 
points concerning it, which, from the imper- 
fection of our faculties, we cannot, by any 
labour, untie. 

Berkeley acknowledges that there is an 
exact correspondence between the visible 
figure and magnitude of objects, and the 
tangible; and that every modification of 
the one has a modification of the other cor- 
responding. He acknowledges, likewise, 
that Nature has established such a con- 
nection between the visible figure and mag- 
nitude of an object, and the tangible, that 
we learn by experience to know the tan- 
gible figure and magnitude from the visible. 
And, having been accustomed to do so from 
infancy, we get the habit of doing it with 
such facility and quickness that we think 
we see the tangible figure, magnitude, and 
distance of bodies, when, in reality, we only 
collect those tangible qualities from the 
corresponding visible qualities, which are 
natural signs of them. [265] 

The correspondence and connection which 
[ L 2iH-266] 



Berkeley shews to be between the visible 
figure and magnitude of objects, and their 
tangible figure and magnitude, is in some 
respects very similar to that which we have 
observed between our sensations and the 
primary qualities with which they are con- 
nected. No sooner is the sensation felt, 
than immediately we have the conception 
and belief of the corresponding quality. 
We give no attention to the sensation ; it 
has not a name ; and it is difficult to per- 
suade us that there was any such thing. 

In like manner, no sooner is the visible 
figure and magnitude of an object seen, than 
immediately we have the conception and 
belief of the corresponding tangible figure 
and magnitude. We give no attention to 
the visible figure and magnitude. It is 
immediately forgot, as if it had never been 
perceived ; and it has no name in common 
language ; and, indeed, until Berkeley 
pointed it out as a subject of speculation, 
and gave it a name, it had none among 
philosophers, excepting in one instance, 
relating to the heavenly bodies, which are 
beyond the reach of touch. With regard 
to them, what Berkeley calls visible magni- 
tude was, by astronomers, cased apparent 
magnitude. 

There is surely an apparent magnitude, 
and an apparent figure of terrestrial objects, 
as well as of celestial ; and this is what 
Berkeley calls their visible figure and mag- 
nitude. But this was never made an object 
of thought among philosophers, until that 
author gave it a name, and observed the 
correspondence and connection between it 
and tangible magnitude and figure, and how 
the mind gets the habit of passing so in- 
stantaneously from the visible figure as a 
sign to the tangible figure as the thing 
signified by it, that the first is- perfectly 
forgot as if it had never been perceived. 
[26o] 

Visible figure, extension, and space, may 
be made a subject of mathematical specula- 
tion as well as the tangible. In the visible, 
we find two dimensions only ; in the tan- 
gible, three. In the one, magnitude is mea- 
sured by angles ; in the other, by lines. 
Every part of visible space bears some pro- 
portion to the whole ; but tangible space 
being immense, any part of it bears no pro- 
portion to the whole. 

Such differences in their properties led 
Bishop Berkeley to think that visible and 
tangible magnitude and figure are things 
totally different and dissimilar, and cannot 
both belong to the same object. 

And upon this dissimilitude is grounded 
one of the strongest arguments by which his 
system is supported. For it may be said, 
if there be external objects which have a 
real extension and figure, it must be either 
tangible extension and figure, or visible, or 



326 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[_ESSJ 



both. * The last appears absurd ; nor was 
it ever maintained by any man, that the 
same object has two kinds of extension and 
figure totally dissimilar. There is then only 
one of the two really in the object ; and the 
other must be ideal. But no reason can be 
assigned why the perceptions of one sense 
should be real, while those of another are 
only ideal ; and he who is persuaded that 
the objects of sight are ideas only, has 
equal reason to believe so of the objects of 
touch. 

This argument, however, loses all its 
force, if it be true, as was formerly hinted, 
that visible figure and extension are only a 
partial conception, and the tangible figure 
and extension a more complete conception 
of that f'gure and extension which is really 
in the object. -f [267] 

It has been proved very fully by Bishop 
Berkeley, that sight alone, without any aid 
from the informations of touch, gives us no 
perception, nor even conception of the dis- 
tance of any object from the eye. But he 
was not aware that this very principle over- 
turns the argument for his system, taken 
from the difference between visible and 
tangible extension and figure. For, sup- 
posing external objects to exist, and to have 
that tangible extension and figure which we 
perceive, it follows demonstrably, from the 
principle now mentioned, that their visible 
extension and figure must be just what we 
see it to be. 

The rules of perspective, and of the pro- 
jection of the sphere, which is a branch of 
perspective, are demonstrable. They sup- 
pose the existence of external objects, which 
have a tangible extension and figure ; and, 
upon that supposition, they demonstrate 
what must be the visibleextension and figure 
of such objects, when placed in such a posi- 
tion and at such a distance. 

Hence, it is evident that the visible figure 
and extension of objects is so far from being 
incompatible with the tangible, that the first 
is a necessary consequence from the last in 
beings that see as we do. The correspond- 
ence between them is not arbitrary, like that 
between words and the thing they signify, as 
Berkeley thought ; but it results necessarily 
from the nature of the two senses ; and this 
correspondence being always found in ex- 
perience to be exactly what the rules of per- 
spective shew that it ought to be if the senses 
give true information, is an argument of the 
truth of both. 



* Or neither. And this omitted supposition is the 
true. For neither sight nor touch give us full and 
accurate information in regard to the real extension 
and figure of objects. See above p. lib", notes *j 
and p. 303, col. V>, note *.— H. 

f If tangible figure and extension be only " a more 
complete conception," &c, it cannot be a cognition 
of real figure and extension.— II. 



CHAPTER XX. 

OF THE EVIDENCE OF SENSE, AND OF BELIEP 
IN GENERAL. 

The intention of nature in the powers 
which we call the external senses, is evident. 
They are intended to give us that informa- 
tion of external objects which the Supreme 
Being saw to be proper for us in our pre- 
sent state; and they give to all mankind 
the information necessary for life, without 
reasoning, without any art or investigation 
on our part. [268] 

The most uninstructed peasant has as 
distinct a conception and as firm a belief 
of the immediate objects of his senses, as 
the greatest philosopher ; and with this he 
rests satisfied, giving himself no concern 
how he came by this conception and belief. 
But the philosopher is impatient to know 
how his conception of external objects, and 
his belief of their existence, is produced. 
This, I am afraid, is hid in impenetrable 
darkness. But where there is no know- 
ledge, there is the more room for conjecture, 
and of this, philosophers have always been 
very liberal. 

The dark cave and shadows of Plato,* the 
species of Aristotle,-)* the films of Epicurus, 
and the ideas and impressions of modern 
phdosophers.* are the productions of human 
fancy, successively invented to satisfy the 
eager desire of knowing how we perceive 
external objects ; but they are all deficient 
in the two essential characters of a true and 
philosophical account of the pboenomenon : 
for we neither have any evidence of their 
existence, nor, if they did exist, can it be 
shewn how they would produce perception. 

It was before observed, that there are 
two ingredients in this operation of percep- 
tion : fix st, the conception or notion of the 
object ; and, secondly, the belief of its pre- 
sent existence. Both are unaccountable. 

That we can assign no adequate cause of 
our first conceptions of things, I think, is 
now acknowledged by the most enlightened 
philosophers. We know that such is our 
constitution, that in certain circumstances 
we have certain conceptions ; but how they 
are produced we know no more than how 
we ourselves were produced. [269] 

When we have got the conception of ex« 
ternal objects by our senses, we can ana- 
lyse them in our thought into their sim- 
ple ingredients ; and we can compound 
those ingredients into various new forms, 
which the senses never presented. But it is 



* ?ee p. 262, col. b, note *.— H. 

\ See Note M.— H. 

± By ideas, as repeatedly noticed, Reid under 
stands always certain representative entities distinct 
from the knowing mind. 

[267-2691 



XX.] 



OF THE EVIDENCE OF SENSE, &c. 



327 



beyond the power of human imagination to 
form any conception, whose simple ingre- 
dients have not been furnished by nature in a 
manner unaccountable to our understanding. 

We have an immediate conception of the 
operations of our own minds, joined with a 
a belief of their existence ; and this we call 
consciousness. * But this is only giving a 
name to this source of our knowledge. It 
is not a discovery of its cause. In like man- 
ner, we have, by our external senses, a 
conception of external objects, joined with a 
belief of their existence ; and this we call 
perception. But this is only giving a name 
to another source of our knowledge, without 
discovering its cause. 

We know that, when certain impressions 
are made upon our organs, nerves, and 
brain, certain corresponding sensations are 
felt, and certain objects are both conceived 
and believed to exist. But in this train 
of operations nature works in the dark. 
We can neither discover the cause of any 
one of them, nor any necessary connection 
of one with another ; and, whether they 
are connected by any necessary tie, or only 
conjoined in our constitution by the will of 
heaven, we know not.-)- 

That any kind of impression upon a body 
should be the efficient cause of sensation, ap- 
pears very absurd. Nor can we perceive 
any necessary connection between sensation 
and the conception and belief of an external 
object. For anything we can discover, we 
might have been so framed as to have all 
the sensations we now have by our senses, 
without any impressions upon our organs, 
and without any conception of any external 
object. For anything we know, we might 
have been so made as to perceive external 
objects, without any impressions on bodily 
organs, and without any of those sensa- 
tions which invariably accompany percep- 
tion in our present frame. [270] 

If our conception of external objects be 
unaccountable, the conviction and belief of 
their existence, which we get by our senses, 
is no less so.± 



* Here consciousness is made to consist in concep- 
tion. l?ut, as Reid could hardly mean that con- 
sciousness conceives {i.e., represents) the operations 
about which it is conversant, and is not intuitively 
cognisant of them, it would seem that he occasionally 
employs conception for knowledge. This is of im- 
portance in explaining favourably Reid's use of the 
word Conception in relation to Perception. But then, 
how vague and vacillating is his language! — H. 

t See p. 257, col. b, note *.— H. 

± If an immediate knowledge of external things— 
that is, a consciousness of the qualities of the non- 
ego — be admitted, the Lelief of their existence follows 
of course. On this supposition, therefore, such a 
belief would not be unaccountable ; for it would be 
accounted for by the fact of the knowledge in which 
it would necessarily be contained. Our belief, in this 
case, of the existence of external objects, would not 
be more inexplicable than our belief that 2 J- 2 = 4. 
In both cases it would be sufficient to say, we believe 
because tve know; for belief is only unaccountable 
when it is not the consequent or concomitant of 
[270,271] 



Belief, assent, conviction, are words 
which I do not think admit of logical defin- 
ition, because the operation of mind sig- 
nified by them is perfectly simple, and of 
its own kind. Nor do they need to be de- 
fined, because they are common words, and 
well understood. 

Belief must have an object. For he 
that believes must believe something ; and 
that which he believes, is called the object 
of his belief. Of this object of his belief, 
he must have some conception, clear or ob- 
scure ; for, although there may be the most 
clear and distinct conception of an object 
without any belief of its existence, there 
can be no belief without conception.* 

Belief is always expressed in language by 
a proposition, wherein something is affirmed 
or denied. This is the form of speech 
which in all languages is appropriated to 
that purpose, and without belief there could 
be neither affirmation nor denial, nor should 
we have any form of words to express 
either. Belief admits of all degrees, from 
the slightest suspicion to the fullest assur- 
ance. These things are so evident to 
every man that reflects, that it would be 
abusing the reader's patience to dwell upon 
them. 

I proceed to observe that there are many 
operations of mind in which, when we 
analyse them as far as we are able, we find 
belief to be an essential ingredient. A man 
cannot be conscious of his own thoughts, 
without believing that he thinks. He can- 
not perceive an object of sense, without be- 
lieving that it exists.-]- He cannot distinctly 
remember a past event, without believing 
that it did exist. Belief therefore is an 
ingredient in consciousness, in perception, 
and in remembrance. [271] 

Not only in most of our intellectual oper- 
ations, but in many of the active princi- 
ples of the human mind, belief enters as an 
ingredient. Joy and sorrow, hope and 
fear, imply a belief of good or ill, either pre- 
sent or in expectation. Esteem, gratitude, 
pity, and resentment, imply a belief of cer- 
tain qualities in their objects. In every 
action that is done for an end, there must 
be a belief of its tendency to that end. So 
large a share has belief in our intellectual 



knowledge. By this, however, I do not, of course, 
mean to say that knowledge is not in itself marvel- 
lous and unaccountable. This statement of Keid 
again favours the opinion that his doctrine of percep- 
tion is not really immediate.— H. 

* Is conception here equivalent to knowledge or to 
thouaht?— H. 

t Mr Stewart (Elem. I., ch.iii., p. 146, and Essays, 
II., ch. ii., p. 79, sq.) proposes a supplement to this 
doctrine of Keid, in order to explain why we believe 
in the existence of the qualities of external objects 
when they are not the objects of our perception. 
This belief he holds to be the result of experience, in 
combination with an original principle ot our consti- 
tution, whereby we ate determined to believe in the 
permanence of the laws of nature.— H 



328 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay II. 



operations, in our active principles, and in 
our actions themselves, that, as faith in 
things divine is represented as the main 
spring in the life of a Christian, so belief in 
general is the main spring in the life of aman. 

That men often believe what there is no 
just ground to believe, and thereby are led 
into hurtful errors, is too evident to be 
denied. And, on the other hand, that there 
are just grounds of belief can as little be 
doubted by any man who is not a perfect 
sceptic. 

We give the name of evidence to what- 
ever is a ground of belief. To believe with- 
out evidence is a weakness which every 
man is concerned to avoid, and which every 
man wishes to avoid. Nor is it in a man's 
power to believe anything longer than he 
thinks he has evidence. 

What this evidence is, is more easily felt 
than described. Those who never reflected 
upon its nature, feel its influence in govern- 
ing their belief. It is the business of the 
logician to explain its nature, and to dis- 
tinguish its various kinds and degrees ; but 
every man of understanding can judge of it, 
and commonly judges right, when the evi- 
dence is fairly laid before him, and his 
mind is free from prejudice. A man who 
knows nothing of the theory of vision may 
have a good eye; and a man who never 
speculated about evidence in the abstract 
may have a good judgment. [272] 

The common occasions of life lead us to 
distinguish evidence into different kinds, to 
which we give names that are well under- 
stood ; such as the evidence of sense, the 
evidence of memory, the evidence of con- 
sciousness, the evidence of testimony, the 
evidence of axioms, the evidence of reason- 
ing. All men of common understanding 
agree that each of these kinds of evidence 
may afford just ground of belief, and they 
agree very generally in the circumstances 
that strengthen or weaken them. 

Philosophers have endeavoured, by ana- 
lysing the different sorts of evidence, to 
find out some common nature wherein they 
all agree, and thereby to reduce them all 
to one. This was the aim of the school- 
men in their intricate disputes about the 
criterion of truth. Des Cartes placed this 
criterion of truth in clear and distinct per- 
ception, and laid it down as a maxim, that 
whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive 
to be true, is true ; but it is difficult to 
know what he understands by clear and 
distinct perception in this maxim. Mr 
Locke placed it in a perception of the agree- 
ment or disagreement of our ideas, which 
perception is immediate in intuitive know- 
ledge, and by the intervention of other ideas 
in reasoning. 

I confess that, although I have, as I 
think, a distinct notion of the different 



kinds of evidence above-mentioned, and, 
perhaps, of some others, which it is unne- 
cessary here to enumerate, yet I am not 
able to find any common nature to which 
they may all be reduced. They seem to 
me to agree only in this, that they are all 
fitted by Nature to produce belief in the 
human mind, some of them in the highest 
degree, which we call certainty, others in 
various degrees according to circumstances. 

I shall take it for granted that the evi- 
dence of sense, when the proper circum- 
stances concur, is good evidence, and a just 
ground of belief. My intention in this 
place is only to compare it with the other 
kinds that have been mentioned, that we 
may judge whether it be reducible to any of 
them, or of a nature peculiar to itself. [273] 

First., It seems to be quite different from 
the evidence of reasoning. All good evi- 
dence is commonly called reasonable evi- 
dence, and very justly, because it ought to 
govern our belief as reasonable creatures. 
And, according to this meaning, I think the 
evidence of sense no less reasonable than 
that of demonstration.* If Nature give 
us information of things that concern us, 
by other means than by reasoning, reason 
itself will direct us to receive that inform- 
ation with thankfulness, and to make the 
best use of it. 

But, when we speak of the evidence of 
reasoning as a particular kind of evidence, 
it means the evidence of propositions that 
are inferred by reasoning, from propositions 
already known and believed. Thus, the 
evidence of the fifth proposition of the 
first book of Euclid's Elements consists in 
this, That it is shewn to be the necessary 
consequence of the axioms, and of the pre- 
ceding propositions. In all reasoning, there 
must be one or more premises, and a con- 
clusion drawn from them. And the pre- 
mises are called the reason why we must 
believe the conclusion which we see to fol- 
low from them. 

That the evidence of sense is of a differ- 
ent kind, needs little proof. No man seeks 
a reason for believing what he sees or feels ; 
and, if he did, it would be difficult to find 
one. But, though he can give no reason 
for believing his senses, his belief remains 
as firm as if it were grounded on demon- 
stration. 

Many eminent philosophers, thinking it 
unreasonable to believe when they could not 
shew a reason, have laboured to furnish us 
with reasons for believing our senses ; but 
their reasons are very insufficient, and 
will not bear examination. Other philoso- 

* 7jv;tiiv Xoyov kqivTizs rr,y et'io-Bytriv, ccpptusict ris tfi 
Sictvoioif- — A?" tOtle. YleQ/rixiiv ob 5£~ xotvTa. ton Zicc 
tmv Xoycav, ccXKoc toWclxis f&c&Wov toi; tpxivof&svoi;.— 
Id. Trf at)ertir,tru uciXXoy *? tu Xoyu sr*5"£UrE0»* xa.) te7; 
Xoyois sk» oueXeycCfAtvet itismCun rot;' tpatvouivoif.— 
Id. 'H a.'ic-0y,7ic inrKUn E£t/ 5yv«ii/v. — Id H. 

[_272, 273 J 



XX.]] 



OF THE EVIDENCE OF SKNSE, &c. 



329 



pliers have shewn very clearly the fallacy 
of these reasons, and have, as they imagine, 
discovered invincible reasons against this be- 
lief ; but they have never been able either 
to shake it in themselves, or to convince 
others. [274] The statesman continues to 
plod, the soldier to fight, and the merchant 
to export and import, without being in the 
least moved by the demonstrations that 
have been offered of the non-existence of 
those things about which they are so seri- 
ously employed. And a man may as soon, 
by reasoning, pull the moon out of her orbit, 
as destroy the belief of the objects of sense. 
Shall we say, then, that the evidence 
of sense is the same with that of axioms, 
or self-evident truths ? I answer, First, 
That, all modern philosophers seem to agree 
that the existence of the objects of sense 
is not self-evident, because some of them 
have endeavoured to prove it by subtle rea- 
soning, others to refute it. Neither of 
these can consider it as self-evident. 

Secondly, I would observe that the word 
axiom is taken by philosophers in such a 
sense as that the existence of the objects 
of sense cannot, with propriety, be called 
an axiom. They give the name of axiom 
only to self-evident truths, that are neces- 
sary, and are not limited to time and place, 
but must be true at all times and in all 
places. The truths attested by our senses 
are not of this kind ; they are contingent, 
and limited to time and place. 

Thus, that one is the half of two, is an 
axiom. It is equally true at all times and 
in all places. We perceive, by attending 
to the proposition itself, that it cannot but 
be true ; and, therefore, it is called an eter- 
nal, necessary, and immutable truth. That 
there is at present a chair on my right hand, 
and another on my left, is a truth attested 
by my senses ; but it is not necessary, nor 
eternal, nor immutable. It may not be 
true next minute ; and, therefore, to call it 
an axiom would, I apprehend, be to deviate 
from the common use of the word. [275] 
Thirdly, If the word axiom be put to 
signify every truth which is known imme- 
diately, without being deduced from any 
antecedent truth, then the existence of the 
objects of sense may be called an axiom ; 
for my senses give me as immediate con- 
viction of what they testify, as my under- 
standing gives of what is commonly called 
an axiom. 

There is, no doubt, an analogy between 
the evidence of sense and the evidence of 
testimony. Hence, we find, in all lan- 
guages, the analogical expressions of the 
testimony of sense, of giving credit to our 
senses, and the like. But there is a real 
difference between the two, as well as a 
similitude. In believing upon testimony, 
ue rely upon the authority of a person who 
['27 4-276] 



testifies ; but we have no such authority for 
believing our senses. 

Shall we say, then, that this belief is the 
inspiration of the Almighty ? I think this 
may be said in a good sense ; for I take it 
to be the immediate effect of our constitu- 
tion, which is the work of the Almighty. 
But, if inspiration be understood to imply 
a persuasion of its coming from God, our 
belief of the objects of sense is not inspira- 
tion ; for a man would believe his senses 
though he had no notion of a Deity. He 
who is persuaded that he is the workman- 
ship of God, and that it is a part of his 
constitution to believe his senses, may 
think that a good reason to confirm his 
belief. But he had the belief before he could 
give this or any other reason for it. 

If we compare the evidence of sense with 
that of memory, we find a great resem- 
blance, but still some difference. I remem- 
ber distinctly to have dined yesterday with 
such a company. What is the meaning of 
this ? It is, that I have a distinct con- 
ception and firm belief of this past event ; 
not by reasoning, not by testimony, but 
immediately from my constitution. And I 
give the name of memory to that part of 
my constitution by which I have this kind 
of conviction of past events. [276] 

I see a chair on my right hand. What 
is the meaning of this ? It is, that I have, 
by my constitution, a distinct conception 
and firm belief of the present existence of 
the chair in such a place and in such a 
position ; and I give the name of seeing to 
that part of my constitution by which I 
have this immediate conviction. The two 
operations a.uree in the immediate convic- 
tion which they give. They agree in this 
also, that the things believed are not 
necessary, but contingent, and limited to 
time and place. But they differ in two 
respects : — First, That memory has some- 
thing for its object that did exist in time 
past ; but the object of sight, and of all the 
senses, must be something which exists at 
present ; — and, Secondly, That I see by my 
eyes, and only when they are directed to 
the object, and when it is illuminated. But 
my memory is not limited by any bodily 
organ that I know, nor by light and dark- 
ness, though it has its limitations of another 
kind.* 

These differences are obvious to all men, 
and very reasonably lead them to consider 
seeing and remembering as operations spe- 
cifically different. But the nature of the 
evidence they give, has a great resemblance. 

* There is a more important difference than these 
omitted. In memory, we cannot possibly be con- 
scious or immediately cognisant of any object beyond 
the modifications of "the ego itself. In perception, (if 
an immediate perception be allowed,) we must be 
conscious, or immediately cognisant, of scm° pheno- 
menon of the non-ego. — H. 



330 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay n. 



A like difference and a like resemblance 
there is between the evidence of sense and 
that of consciousness, which I leave the 
reader to trace. 

As to the opinion that evidence consists 
in a perception of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of ideas, we may have occasion 
to consider it more particularly in another 
place. Here I only observe, that, when 
taken in the most favourable sense, it may 
be applied with propriety to the evidence of 
reasoning, and to the evidence of some 
axioms. But I cannot see how, in any 
sense, it can be applied to the evidence of 
consciousness, to the evidence of memory, 
or to that of the senses. 

When I compare the different kinds of 
evidence above-mentioned, I confess, after 
all, that the evidence of reasoning, and that 
of some necessary and self-evident truths, 
seems to be the least mysterious and the 
most perfectly comprehended ; and there- 
fore I do not think it strange that philoso- 
phers should have endeavoured to reduce all 
kinds of evidence to these. [277] 

When I see a proposition to be self-evi- 
dent and necessary, and that the subject is 
plainly included in the predicate, there seems 
to be nothing more that I can desire in order 
to understand why I believe it. And when 
I see a consequence that necessarily follows 
from one or more self-evident propositions, I 
want nothing more with regard to my belief 
of that consequence. The light of truth so 
fills my mind in these cases, that I can 
neither conceive nor desire anything more 
satisfying. 

On the other hand, when I remember dis- 
tinctly a past event, or see an object before 
my eyes, this commands my belief no less 
than an axiom. But when, as a philosopher, 
I reflect upon this belief, and want to trace it 
to its origin, I am not able to resolve it into 
necessary and self-evident axioms, or con- 
clusions that are necessarily consequent 
upon them. I seem to want that evidence 
which I can best comprehend, and which 
gives perfect satisfaction to an inquisitive 
mind ; yet it is ridiculous to doubt ; and I 
find it is not in my power. An attempt to 
throw off this belief is like an attempt to fly, 
equally ridiculous and impracticable. 

To a philosopher, who has been accus- 
tomed to think that the treasure of his know- 
ledge is the acquisition of that reasoning 
power of which he boasts, it is no doubt 
humiliating to find that his reason can lay no 
claim to the greater part of it. 

By his reason, he can discover certain 
abstract and necessary relations of things ; 
but his knowledge of what really exists, or 
did exist, comes by another channel, which 
is open to those who cannot reason. He is 
led to it in the dark, and knows not how he 
came by it. [278] 



It is no wonder that the pride of philo- 
sophy should lead some to invent vain 
theories in order to account for this know- 
ledge ; and others, who see this to be im- 
practicable, to spurn at a knowledge they 
cannot account for, and vainly attempt to 
throw it off as a reproach to their under- 
standing. But the wise and the humble 
will receive it as the gift of Heaven, and 
endeavour to make the best use of it. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES. 

Our senses may be considered in two 
views : first, As they afford us agreeable 
sensations, or subject us to such as are dis- 
agreeable ; and, secondly, As they give us 
information of things that concern us. 

In the first view, they neither require nor 
admit of improvement. Both the painful 
and the agreeable sensations of our external 
senses are given by nature for certain ends ; 
and they are given in that degree which is 
the most proper for their end. By dimin- 
ishing or increasing them, we should not 
mend, but mar the work of Nature. 

Bodily pains are indications of some dis- 
order or hurt of the body, and admonitions 
to use the best means in our power to pre- 
vent or remove their causes. As far as this 
can be done by temperance, exercise, regi- 
men, or the skill of the physician, every man 
hath sufficient inducement to do it. 

When pain cannot be prevented or re- 
moved, it is greatly alleviated by patience 
and fortitude of mind. While the mind is 
superior to pain, the man is not unhappy, 
though he may be exercised. It leaves no 
sting behind it, but rather matter of triumph 
and agreeable reflection, when borne pro- 
perly, and in a good cause. [279] The 
Canadians have taught us that even savages 
may acquire a superiority to the most ex- 
cruciating pains ; and, in every region of 
the earth, instances will be found, where a 
sense of duty, of honour, or even of worldly 
interest, have triumphed over it. 

It is evident that nature intended for man, 
in his present state, a life of labour and 
toil, wherein he may be occasionally exposed 
to pain and danger ; and the happiest man 
is not he who has felt least of those evils, 
but he whose mind is fitted to bear them by 
real magnanimity. 

Our active and perceptive powers are 
improved and perfected by use and exercise. 
This is the constitution of nature. But, 
with regard to the agreeable and disagree- 
able sensations we have by our senses, the 
very contrary is an established constitution 
of nature — the frequent repetition of them 
weakens their force. Sensations at first very 
[277-279] 



chap, xxi.] OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES. 



331 



disagreeable, by use become tolerable, and 
at last perfectly indifferent. And those that 
are at first very agreeable, by frequent re- 
petition become insipid, and at last, per- 
haps, give disgust. Nature has set limits 
to the pleasures of sense, which we cannot 
pass ; and all studied gratifications of them, 
as it is mean and unworthy of a man, so it 
is foolish and fruitless. 

The man who, in eating and drinking, 
and in other gratifications of sense, obeys 
the calls of Nature, without affecting deli- 
cacies and refinements, has all the enjoy- 
ment that the senses can afford. If one 
could, by a soft and luxurious life, acquire 
a more delicate sensibility to pleasure, it 
must be at the expense of a like sensibility 
to pain, from which he can never promise 
exemption, and at the expense of cherishing 
many diseases which produce pain. 

The improvement of our external senses, 
as they are the means of giving us informa- 
tion, is a subject more worthy of our atten- 
tion ; for, although they are not the noblest 
and most exalted powers of our nature, yet 
they are not the least useful. [280] All 
that we know, or can know, of the material 
world, must be grounded upon their inform- 
ation ; and the philosopher, as well as the 
day-labourer, must be indebted to them for 
the largest part of his knowledge. 

Some of our perceptions by the senses 
may be called original, because they require 
no previous experience or learning ; but 
the far greatest part is acquired, and the 
fruit of experience. 

Three of our senses — to wit, smell, taste, 
and hearing — originally give us only certain 
sensations, and a conviction that these sensa- 
tions are occasioned by some external object. 
We give a name to that quality of the ob- 
ject by which it is fitted to produce such a 
sensation, and connect that quality with the 
object, and with its other qualities. 

Thus we learn, that a certain sensation 
of smell is produced by a rose ; and that 
quality in the rose, by which it is fitted to 
produce this sensation, we call the smell of 
the rose. Here it is evident that the sensa- 
tion is original. The perception that the 
rose has that quality which we call its 
smell, is acquired. In like manner, we 
learn all those qualities in bodies which we 
call their smell, their taste, their sound. 
These are all secondary qualities, and we 
give the same name to them which we give 
to the sensations they produce; not from 
any similitude between the sensation and 
the quality of the same name, but because 
the quality is signified to us by the sensation 
as its sign, and because our senses give us 
no other knowledge of the quality but that 
it is fit to produce such a sensation. 

By the other two senses, we have much 
more ample information. By sight, we 
T2S0-282] 



learn to distinguish objects by their colour, 
in the same manner as by their sound, 
taste, and smell. By this sense, we perceive 
visible objects to have extension in two 
dimensions, to have visible figure and 
magnitude, and a certain angular distance 
from one another. These, I conceive, are 
the original perceptions of sight.* [281] 

By touch, we not only perceive the tem- 
perature of bodies as to heat and cold,-J- 
which are secondary qualities, but we per- 
ceive originally their three dimensions, their 
tangible figure and magnitude, their linear 
distance from one another, their hardness, 
softness, or fluidity. These qualities we 
originally perceive by touch only ; but, by 
experience, we learn to perceive all or most 
of them by sight. 

We learn to perceive, by one sense, what 
originally could have been perceived only 
by another, by finding a connection between 
the objects of the different senses. Hence 
the original perceptions, or the sensations 
of one sense become signs of whatever has 
always been found connected with them ; 
and from the sign, the mind passes imme- 
diately to the conception and belief of the 
thing signified. And, although the connec- 
tion in the mind between the sign and the 
thing signified by it, be the effect of custom, 
this custom becomes a second nature, and 
it is difficult to distinguish it from the ori- 
ginal power of perception. 

Thus, if a sphere of one uniform colour 
be set before me, I perceive evidently by my 
eye its spherical figure and its three dimen- 
sions. All the world will acknowledge 
that, by sight only, without touching it, I 
may be certain that it is a sphere ; yet it 
is no less certain that, by the original power 
of sight, I could not perceive it to be a 
sphere, and to have three dimensions. The 
eye originally could only perceive two di- 
mensions, and a gradual variation of colour 
on the different sides of the object. 

It is experience that teaches me that the 
variation of colour is an effect of spherical 
convexity, and of the distribution of light 
and shade. But so rapid is the progress of 
the thought, from the effect to the cause, 
that we attend only to the last, and can 
hardly be persuaded that we do not imme- 
diately see the three dimensions of the 
sphere. [282] 

Nay, it may be observed, that, in this 
case, the acquired perception in a manner 
effaces the original one ; for the sphere is 
seen to be of one uniform colour, though 
originally there would have appeared a 
gradual variation of colour. But that ap- 



* See above, p. 123, col. b, note f, and p. 1S5, col. a, 
note *. 

•} Whether heat, cold, &c, be objects of touch or 
of a different sense, it is not here the place to inquire. 
-H. 



332 



ON. THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[ESSAY II. 



parent variation we learn to interpret as 
the effect of light and shade falling upon a 
sphere of one uniform colour. 

A sphere may be painted upon a plane, 
so exactly, as to be taken for a real sphere 
when the eye is at a proper distance and 
in the proper point of view. We say in 
this case, that the eye is deceived, that the 
appearance is fallacious. But there is no 
fallacy in the original perception, but only 
in that which is acquired by custom. The 
variation of colour, exhibited to the eye by 
the painter's art, is the same which nature 
exhibits by the different degrees of light 
falling upon the convex surface of a sphere. 

In perception, whether original or ac- 
quired, there is something which may be 
called the sign, and something which is 
signified to us, or brought to our knowledge 
by that sign. 

In original perception, the signs are the 
various sensations which are produced by 
the impressions made upon our organs. The 
things signified, are the objects perceived 
in consequence of those sensations, by the 
original constitution of our nature. 

Thus, when I grasp an ivory ball in my 
hand, I have a certain sensation of touch. 
Although this sensation be in the mind and 
have no similitude to anything material, 
yet, by the laws of my constitution, it is 
immediately followed by the conception 
and belief, that there is in my hand a hard 
smooth body of a spherical figure, and about 
an inch and a half in diameter. This belief 
is grounded neither upon reasoning, nor 
upon experience ; it is the immediate effect 
of my constitution, and this I call original 
perception.* [283] 

In acquired perception, the sign may be 
either a sensation, or something originally 
perceived. The thing signified, is something 
which, by experience, has been found con- 
nected with that sign. 

Thus, when the ivory ball is placed be- 
fore my eye, I perceive by sight what I 
before perceived by touch, that the ball is 
smooth, spherical, of such a diameter, and 
at such a distance from the eye ; and to 
this is added the perception of its colour. 
All these things I perceive by sight, dis- 
tinctly and with certainty. Yet it is cer- 
tain from principles of philosophy, that, if I 
had not been accustomed to compare the 
informations of sight with those of touch, 
I should not have perceived these things 
by sight. I should have perceived a circu- 
lar object, having its colour gradually more 
faint towards the shaded side. But I should 
not have perceived it to have three dimen- 
sions, to be spherical, to be of such a linear 
magnitude, and at such a distance from the 
eye. That these last mentioned are not 

* See above, p. ll\, et-alibi.—H. 



original perceptions of sight, but acquired 
by experience, is sufficiently evident from 
the principles of optics, and from the art of 
painters, in painting objects of three dimen- 
sions, upon a plane which has only two. 
And it has been put beyond all doubt, by 
observations recorded of several persons, 
who having, by cataracts in their eyes, 
been deprived of sight from their infancy, 
have been couched and made to see, after 
they came to years of understanding. * 

Those who have had their eyesight from 
infancy, acquire such perceptions so early 
that they cannot recollect the time when 
they had them not, and therefore make no 
distinction between them and their original 
perceptions ; nor can they be easily per- 
suaded that there is any just foundation 
for such a distinction. [284] In all lan- 
guages men speak with equal assurance of 
their seeing objects to be spherical or cubi- 
cal, as of their feeling them to be so ; nor 
do they ever dream that these perceptions 
of sight were not as early and original as 
the perceptions they have of the same ob- 
jects by touch. 

This power which we acquire of perceiv- 
ing things by our senses, which originally 
we should not have perceived, is not the 
effect of any reasoning on our part : it is 
the result of our constitution, and of the 
situations in which we happen to be placed. 

We are so made that, when two things 
are found to be conjoined in certain circum- 
stances, we are prone to believe that they 
are connected by nature, and will always be 
found together in like circumstances. The 
belief which we are led into in such cases is 
not the effect of reasoning, nor does it arise 
from intuitive evidence in the thing believed ; 
it is, as I apprehend, the immediate effect of 
our constitution. Accordingly, it is strongest 
in infancy, before our reasoning power 
appears — before we are capable of draw- 
ing a conclusion from premises. A child 
who has once burnt his finger in a candle, 
from that single instance connects the pain 
of burning with putting his finger in the 
caudle, and believes that these two things 
must go together. It is obvious that this 
part of our constitution is of very great use 
before we come to the use of reason, and 
guards'us from a thousand mischiefs, which, 
without it, we would rush into ; it may 
sometimes lead us into error, but the good 
effects of it far overbalance the ill. 

It is, no doubt, the perfection of a rational 
being to have no belief but what is grounded 
on intuitive evidence, or on just reasoning : 
but man, I apprehend, is not such a being ; 
nor is it the intention of nature that he 
should be such a being, in every period of 
his existence. We come into the world 

* See above, p. 136, note t, and p. 182, note *.— H. 
[283, 281] 



chap, xxi.] OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES. 



333 



without the exercise of reason ; we are 
merely animal before we are rational crea- 
tures ; and it is necessary for our preserva- 
tion, that we should believe many things be- 
fore we can reason. How then is our belief 
to be regulated before we have reason to 
regulate it ? ['285] Has nature left it to be 
regulated by chance ? By no means. It is 
regulated by certain principles, which are 
parts of our constitution ; whether they 
ought to be called animal principles, or in- 
stinctive principles, or what name we give 
to them, is of small moment ; but they are 
certainly different from the faculty of rea- 
son : they do the office of reason while it is 
in its infancy, and must, as it were, be car- 
ried in a nurse's arms, and they are leading- 
strings to it in its gradual progress. 

From what has been said, I think it ap- 
pears that our original powers of perceiving 
objects by our senses receive great improve- 
ment by use and habit ; and without this 
improvement, would be altogether insuf- 
ficient for the purposes of life. The daily 
occurrences of life not only add to our stock 
of knowledge, but give additional percep- 
tive powers to our senses ; and time gives 
us the use of our eyes and ears, as well as 
of our hands and legs. 

This is the greatest and most important 
improvement of our external senses. It is 
to be found in all men come to years of un- 
derstanding, but it is various in different 
persons according to their different occupa- 
tions, and the different circumstances in 
which they are placed. Every aitist re- 
quires an eye as well as a hand in his own 
profession ; his eye becomes skilled in per- 
ceiving, no less than his hand in executing, 
what belongs to his employment. 

Besides this improvement of our senses, 
which nature produces without our inten- 
tion, there are various ways in which they 
may be improved, or their defects re- 
medied by art. As, firsl ', by a due care of 
the organs of sense, that they be in a sound 
and natural state. This belongs to the de- 
partment of the medical faculty. 

Secondly, By accurate attention to the 
objects of sense. The effects of such atten- 
tion in improving our senses, appear in every 
art. The artist, by giving more attention 
to certain objects than others do, by that 
means perceives many things in those ob- 
jects which others do not. [286] Those 
who happen to be deprived of one sense, 
frequently supply that defect in a great de- 
gree, by giving more accurate attention to 
the objects of the senses they have. The 
blind have often been known to acquire un- 
common acuteness in distinguishing things 
by feeling and hearing ; and the deaf are 
uncommonly quick in reading men's thoughts 
in their countenance. 

A third way in which our senses admit of 
[285-287] 



improvement, is, by additional organs, or in- 
struments contrived by art. By the inven- 
tion of optical glasses, and the gradual im- 
provement of them, the natural power of 
vision is wonderfully improved, and a vast 
addition made to the stock of knowledge 
which we acquire by the eye. By speaking- 
trumpets and • ear-trumpets some improve- 
ment has been made in the sense of hearing. 
Whether by similar inventions the other 
senses may be improved, seems uncertain. 

A fourth method by which the informa- 
tion got by our senses may be improved, is, 
by discovering the connection which nature 
hath established between the sensible quali- 
ties of objects, and their more latent qualities. 

By the sensible qualities of bodies, I un- 
derstand those that are perceived immedi- 
ately by the senses, such as their colour, 
figure, feeling, sound, taste, smell. The 
various modifications and various combin- 
ations of these, are innumerable ; so that 
there are hardly two individual bodies in 
Nature that may not be distinguished by 
their sensible qualities. 

The latent qualities are such as are not 
immediately discovered by our senses ; but 
discovered sometimes by accident, some- 
times by experiment or observation. The 
most important part of our knowledge of 
bodies is the knowledge of the latent qua- 
lities of the several species, by which they 
are adapted to certain purposes, either for 
food, or medicine, or agriculture, or for the 
materials or utensils of some art or manu- 
facture. [287] 

I am taught that certain species of bodies 
have certain latent qualities ; but how shall 
I know that this individual is of such a 
species ? This must be known by the sen- 
sible qualities which characterise the species. 
I must know that this is bread, and that 
wine, before I eat the one or drink the 
other. I must know that this is rhubarb, 
and that opium, before I use the one or the 
other for medicine. 

It is one branch of human knowledge to 
know the names of the various- species of 
natural and artificial bodies, and to know 
the sensible qualities by which they are 
ascertained to be of such a species, and by 
which they are distinguished from one an- 
other. It is another branch of knowledge 
to know the latent qualities of the several 
species, and the uses to which they are 
subservient. 

The man who possesses both these 
branches is informed, by his senses, of in- 
numerable things of real moment which are 
hid from those who possess only one, or 
neither. This is an improvement in the 
information got by our senses, which must 
keep pace with the improvements made in 
natural history, in natural philosophy, and 
in the arts. 



334 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



j^ESSAY n. 



It would be an improvement still higher 
if we were able to discover any connection 
between the sensible qualities of bodies and 
their latent qualities, without knowing the 
species, or whai may have been discovered 
with regard to it. 

Some philosophers, of the first rate, have 
made attempts towards this noble improve- 
ment, not without promising hopes of suc- 
cess. Thus, the celebrated Linnaeus has 
attempted to point out certain sensible qua- 
lities by which a plant may very probably 
be concluded to be poisonous without know- 
ing its name or species. He has given se- 
veral other instances, wherein certain medi- 
cal and economical virtues of plants are 
indicated by their external appearances. 
Sir Isaac Newton hath attempted to shew 
that, from the colours of bodies, we may 
form a probable conjecture of the size of 
their constituent parts, bv which the rays 
of light are reflected. [288] 

No man can pretend to set limits to the 
discoveries that may be made by human 
genius and industry, of such connections 
between the latent and the sensible quali- 
ties of bodies. A wide field here opens to 
our view, whose boundaries no man can 
ascertain, of improvements that may here- 
after be made in the information conveyed 
to us by our senses. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

OF THE FALLACY OF THE SENSES. 

Complaints of the fallacy of the senses 
have been very common in ancient and in 
modern times, especially among the philo- 
sophers. And, if we should take for granted 
all that they have said on this subject, the 
natural conclusion from it might seem to 
be, that the senses are given to us by some 
malignant demon on purpose to delude us, 
rather than that they are formed by the 
wise and beneficent Author of Nature, to 
give us true information of things necessary 
to our preservation and happiness. 

The whole sect of atomists among the 
ancients, led by Democritus, and afterwards 
by Epicurus, maintained that all the quali- 
ties of bodies which the moderns call se- 
condary qualities — to wit, smell, taste, sound, 
colour, heat, and cold — are mere illusions of 
sense, and have no real existence.* Plato 
maintained that we can attain no real know- 
ledge of material things ; and that eternal 
and immutable ideas are the only objects of 
real knowledge. The academics and scep- 
tics anxiously sought for arguments to 
prove the fallaciousness of our senses, in 
order to support their favourite doctrine, 



* Not correctly stated. See above, p. 'A\6, note ). 
The Epicureans denied the fallacy of Sense.— H. 



that even in things that seem most evident, 
we ought to withhold assent. [289 J 

Among the Peripatetics we find frequent 
complaints that the senses often deceive us, 
and that their testimony is to be suspected, 
when it is not confirmed by reason, by which 
the errors of sense may be corrected. This 
complaint they supported by many com- 
monplace instances : such as, the crooked 
appearance of an oar in water ; objects being 
magnified, and their distance mistaken, in 
a fog ; the sun and moon appearing about 
a foot or two in diameter, while they are 
really thousands of miles ; a square tower 
being taken at a distance to be round. These, 
and many similar appearances, they thought 
to be sufficiently accounted for from the 
fallacy of the senses : and thus the fallacy 
of the senses was used as a decent cover to 
conceal their ignorance of the real causes of 
such phaenomena, and served the same pur- 
pose as their occult qualities and substantial 
forms. * 

Des Cartes and his followers joined in 
the same complaint. Antony le Grand, a 
philosopher of that sect, in the first chapter 
of his Logic, expresses the sentiments of 
the sect as follows : " Since all our senses are 
fallacious, and we are frequently deceived 
by them, common reason advises that we 
should not put too much trust- in them, nay, 
that we should suspect falsehood in every- 
thing they represent ; for it is imprudence 
and temerity to trust to those who have but 
oncedeceived us ; and,if they err at any time, 
they may be believed always to err. They 
are given by nature for this purpose only 
to warn us of what is useful and what is 
hurtful to us. The order of Nature is per- 
verted when we put them to any other 
use, and apply them for the knowledge of 
truth." 

When we consider that the active part 
of 'mankind, in all ages from the beginning 
of the world, have rested their most import- 
ant concerns upon the testimony of sense, 
it will be very difficult to reconcile their 
conduct with the speculative opinion so 
generally entertained of the fallaciousness 
of the senses. [290] And it seems to be 
a very unfavourable account of the work- 
manship of the Supreme Being, to think 
that he has given us one faculty to deceive 
us — to wit, our senses ; and another faculty 
— to wit, our reason — to detect the fallacy. 

It deserves, therefore, to be considered, 
whether the fallaciousness of our senses be 
not a common error, which men have been 
led into, from a desire to conceal their igno- 
rance, or to apologize for their mistakes. 

There are two powers which we owe to 

* A very inaccurate representation of the Peripa- 
tetic doctrine touching this matter. In fact, the Ari- 
stotelian doctrine, and that of Reid himself, are 
almost the same. — H. 

[288-290] 



chap, xxn.] OF THE FALLACY OF THE SENSES. 



335 



our external senses— sensation, and the per- 
ception of external objects. 

It is impossible that there can be any 
fallacy in sensation : for we are conscious of 
all our sensations, and they can neither be 
any other in their nature, nor greater or 
less in their degree than we feel them. It 
is impossible that a man should be in pain, 
when he does not feel pain ; and when he 
feels pain, it is impossible that his pain 
should not be real, and in its degree what 
it is felt to be ; and the same thing may be 
said of every sensation whatsoever. An 
agreeable or an uneasy sensation may be 
forgot when it is past, but when it is pre- 
sent, it can be nothing but what we feel. 

If, therefore, there be any fallacy in our 
senses, it must be in the perception of ex- 
ternal objects, winch we shall next con- 
sider. 

And here I grant that we can conceive 
powers of perceiving external objects more 
perfect than ours, which, possibly, beings of a 
higher order may enjoy. We can perceive 
external objects only by means of bodily or- 
gans ; and these are liable to various dis- 
orders, which sometimes affect our powers 
of perception. The nerves and brain, which 
are interior organs of perception, are like- 
wise liable to disorders, as every part of the 
human frame is. [291] 

The imagination, the memory, the judging 
and reasoning powers, are all liable to be 
hurt, or even destroyed, by disorders of the 
oody, as well as our powers of perception ; 
but we do not on this account call them 
fallacious. 

Our senses, our memory, and our reason, 
are all limited and imperfect — this is the 
lot of humanity : but they are such as the 
Author of our being saw to be best fitted 
for us in our present state. Superior natures 
may have intellectual powers which we have 
not, or such as we have, in a more perfect 
degree, and less liable to accidental disor- 
ders ; but we have no reason to think that 
God has given fallacious powers to any of 
his creatures : this would be to think dis- 
honourably of our Maker, and would lay a 
foundation for universal scepticism. 

The appearances commonly imputed to 
the fallacy of the senses are many and of 
different kinds; but I think they may be 
reduced to the four following classes. 

First, Many things called deceptions of 
the senses are-only conclusions rashly drawn 
from the testimony of the senses. In these 
cr.ses the testimony of the senses is true, 
but we rashly draw a conclusion from it, 
which does not necessarily follow. We are 
disposed to impute our errors rather to false 
information than to inconclusive reasoning, 
and to biame our senses for the wrong con- 
clusions we draw from their testimony. 

Thus, when a man has taken a counter- 
[291-293] 



feit guinea for a true one, he says his senses 
deceived him ; but he lays the blame where 
it ought not to be laid : for we may ask him, 
Did your senses give a false testimony of 
the colour, or of the figure, or of the im- 
pression ? No. But this is all that tbey 
testified, and this they testified truly : From 
these premises you concluded that it was a 
true guinea, but this conclusion does not 
follow ; you erred, therefore, not by relying 
upon the testimony of sense, but by judging 
rashly from its testimony. [292] Not only 
are your senses innocent of this error, but 
it is only by their information that it can be 
discovered. If you consult them properly, 
they will inform you that what you took for 
a guinea is base metal, or is deficient in 
weight, and this can only be known by the 
testimony of sense. 

I remember to have met with a man who 
thought the argument used by Protestants 
against the Popish doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation, from the testimony of our senses, 
inconclusive ; because, said he, instances 
may be given where several of our sensesmay 
deceive usi How do we know then that 
there may not be cases wherein they all 
deceive us, and no sense is left to detect the 
fallacy ? I begged of him to know an in- 
stance wherein several of our senses deceive 
us. I take, said he, a piece of soft turf ; I 
cut it into the shape of an apple ; with the 
essence of apples, I give it the smell of an 
apple ; and with paint, I can give it the skin 
and colour of an apple. Here then is a body, 
which, if you judge by your eye, by your 
touch, or by your smell, is an apple. 

To this I would answer, that no one of 
our senses deceives us in this case. My 
sight and touch testify that it has the shape 
aLd colour of an apple : this is trie. The 
sense of smelling testifies that it has the 
smell of an apple : this is likewise true, and 
is no deception. Where then lies the de- 
ception ? It is evident it lies in this — that 
because this body has some qualities belong- 
ing tovm apple I conclude that it is an apple. 
This is a fallacy, not of the senses, but of 
inconclusive "reasoning. 

Many false judgments that are accounted 
deceptions of sense, arise from our mistaking 
relative motion for real or absolute motion. 
These can.be no deceptions of sense, because 
by our senses we perceive only the relative 
motions of bodies ; and it is by reasoning 
that we infer the real from the relative which 
we perceive. A little reflection may satisfy 
us of this. [293] 

It was before observed, that we perceive 
extension to be one sensible quality of 
bodies, and thence are necessarily led to 
conceive space, though space be of itself 
no object of sense. When a body is re- 
moved out of its place, the space which it 
filled remains empty till it is filled by some 



330 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[» 



other body, and would remain if it should 
never be filled. Before any body existed, the 
space which bodies now occupy was empty 
spaee, capable of receiving bodies ; for no 
body can exist where there is no space to 
contain it. There is space therefore where- 
ever bodies exist, or can exist. 

Hence it is evident that space can have 
no limits. It is no less evident that it is 
immovable. Bodies placed in it are mov- 
able, but the place where they were cannot 
be moved ; and we can as easily conceive a 
thing to be moved from itself, as one part 
of space brought nearer to or removed 
farther from another. 

The space, therefore, which is unlimited 
and immovable, is called by philosophers 
absolute space. Absolute or real motion is 
a change of place in absolute space. 

Our senses do not testify the absolute 
motion or absolute rest of any body. When 
one body removes from anothei*, this may 
be discerned by the senses ; but whether 
any body keeps the same part of absolute 
space, we do not perceive by our senses. 
When one body seems to remove from an- 
other, we can infer with certainty that there 
is absolute motion, but whether in the one 
or the other, or partly in both, is not dis- 
cerned by sense. 

Of all the prejudices which philosophy 
contradicts, I believe there is none so general 
as that the earth keeps its place unmoved. 
This opinion seems to be universal, till it 
is corrected by instruction or by philoso- 
phical speculation. Those who have any 
tincture of education are not now in danger 
of being held by it, but they find at first a 
reluctance to believe that there are anti- 
podes ; that the earth is spherical, and turns 
round its axis every day, and round the sun 
every year : they can recollect the time 
when reason struggled with prejudice upon 
these points, and prevailed at length, but 
not without some effort. [294] 

The cause of a prejudice so very general 
is not unworthy of investigation. But that 
is not our present business. It is sufficient 
to observe, that it cannot justly be called a 
fallacy of sense ; because our senses testify 
only the change of situation of one body in 
relation to other bodies, and not its change 
of situation in absolute space. It is only 
the relative motion of bodies that we per- 
eeive, and that we perceive truly. It is 
the province of reason and philosophy, from 
the relative motions which we perceive, to 
collect the real and absolute motions which 
produce them. 

All motion must be estimated from some 
point or place which is supposed to be at 
rest. We perceive not the points of abso- 
lute space, from which real and absolute 
motion must be reckoned . And there are 
obvious reasons that lead mankind in the 



state of ignorance, to make the earth the 
fixed place from which they may estimate 
the various motions they perceive. The 
custom of doing this from infancy, and of 
using constantly a language which supposes 
the earth to be at rest, may perhaps be the 
cause of the general prejudice in favour of 
this opinion. 

Thus it appears that, if we distinguish 
accurately between what our senses really 
and naturally testify, and the conclusions 
which we draw from their testimony by 
reasoning, we shall find many of the errors, 
called fallacies of the senses, to be no fal- 
lacy of the senses, but rash judgments, 
which are not to be imputed to our senses. 

Secondly, Another class of errors imputed 
to the fallacy of the senses, are those which 
we are liable to in our acquired perceptions. 
Acquired perception is not properly the 
testimony of those senses which God hath 
given us, but a conclusion drawn from what 
the senses testify. [295] In our past ex- 
perience, we have found certain things con- 
joined with what our senses testify. We 
are led by our constitution to expect this 
conjunction in time to come ; and when 
we have often found it in our experience to 
happen, we acquire a firm belief that the 
things which we have found thus conjoined, 
are connected in nature, and that one is a 
sign of the other. The appearance of the 
sign immediately produces the belief of its 
usual attendant, and we think we perceive 
the one as well as the other. 

That such conclusions are formed even 
in infancy, no man can doubt : nor is it less 
certain that they are confounded with the 
natural and immediate perceptions of sense, 
and in all languages are called by the same 
name. We are therefore authorized by 
language to call them perception, and must 
often do so, or speak unintelligibly. But 
philosophy teaches us, in this, as in many 
other instances, to distinguish things which 
the vulgar confound. I have therefore 
given the name of acquired perception to 
such conclusions, to distinguish them from 
what is naturally, originally, and imme- 
diately testified by our senses. Whether 
this acquired perception is to be resol ved 
into some process of reasoning, of which 
we have lost the remembrance, as some 
philosophers think, or whether it results 
from some part of our constitution distinct 
from reason, as I rather believe, does not 
concern the present subject. If the first 
of these opinions be true, the errors of ac- 
quired perception will fall under the first 
class before mentioned. If not, it makes 
a distinct class by itself. But whether the 
one or the other be true, it must be 
observed that the errors of acquired per- 
ception are not properly fallacies of our 
senses. 

[294. 2951 



chap, xxii.] OF THE FALLACY OF THE SENSES. 



337 



Thus, when a globe is set before me, I 
perceive by my eyes that it has three di- 
mensions and a spherical figure. To say 
that this is not perception, would be to 
reject the authority of custom in the use of 
words, which no wise man will do : but 
that it is not the testimony of my sense of 
seeing, every philosopher knows. I see 
only a circular form, having the light and 
colour distributed in a certain way over it. 
[296] But, being accustomed to observe 
this distribution of light and colour only in 
a spherical body, I immediately, from what 
I see, believe the object to be spherical, and 
say that I see or perceive it to be spherical. 
When a ^painter, by an exact imitation of 
that distribution of light and colour which 
I have been accustomed to see only in a 
real sphere, deceives me, so as to make me 
take that to be a real sphere which is only a 
painted one, the testimony of my eye is true 
— the colour and visible figure of the object 
is truly what I see it to be : the error lies 
in the conclusion drawn from what I see — 
to wit, that the object has three dimensions 
and a spherical figure. The conclusion is 
false in this case ; but, whatever be the 
origin of this conclusion, it is not properly 
the testimony of sense. 

To this class we must refer the judg- 
ments we are apt to form of the distance 
and magnitude of the heavenly bodies, and 
of terrestrial objects seen on high. The 
mistakes we make of the magnitude and 
distance of objects seen through optical 
glasses, or through an atmosphere uncom- 
monly clear or uncommonly foggy, belong 
likewise to this class. 

The errors we are led into in acquired 
perception are very rarely hurtful to us in 
the conduct of life ; they are gradually cor- 
rected by a more enlarged experience, and 
a more perfect knowledge of the laws of 
Nature : and the general laws of our con- 
stitution, by which we are sometimes led 
into them, are of the greatest utility. 

We come into the world ignorant of 
everything, and by our ignorance exposed 
to many dangers and to many mistakes. The 
regular train of causes and effects, which 
divine wisdom has established, and which 
directs every step of our conduct in advanced 
life, is unknown, until it is gradually dis- 
covered by experience. [297] 

We must learn much from experience 
before we can reason, and therefore must be 
liable to many errors. Indeed, I apprehend, 
that, in the first part of life, reason would do 
us much more hurt than good Were we 
sensible of our condition in that period, and 
capable of reflecting upon it, we snould be 
like a man in the dark, surrounded with 
dangers, where every step he takes may be 
into a pit. Reason would direct him to sit 
down, and wait till he could see about him. 
("2.96-298] 



In like manner, if we suppose an infant 
endowed with reason, it would direct him 
to do nothing, till he knew what could be 
done with safety. This he can only know 
by experiment, and experiments are danger- 
ous. Reason directs, that experiments that 
are full of danger should not be made with- 
out a very urgent cause. It would there- 
fore make the infant unhappy, and hinder 
his improvement by experience. 

Nature has followed another plan. The 
child, unapprehensive of danger, is led by 
instinct to exert all his active powers, to 
try everything without the cautious admo- 
nitions of reason, and to believe everything 
that is told him. Sometimes he suffers by 
his rashness what reason would have pre- 
vented : but his suffering proves a salutary 
discipline, and makes him for the future 
avoid the cause of it. Sometimes he is 
imposed upon by his credulity ; but it is of 
infinite benefit to him upon the whole. His 
activity and credulity are more useful qua- 
lities and better instructors than reason 
would be ; they teach him more in a day 
than reason would do in a year ; they furnish 
a stock of materials for reason to work upon ; 
they make him easy and happy in a period 
of his existence when reason could only 
serve to suggest a thousand tormenting 
anxieties and fears : and he acts agreeably 
to the constitution and intention of nature 
even when he does and believes what reason 
would not justify. So that the wisdom and 
goodness of the Author of nature is no less 
conspicuous in withholding the exercise of 
our reason in this period, than in bestowing 
it when we are ripe for it. [298] 

A third class of errors, ascribed to the 
fallacy of the senses, proceeds from igno- 
rance of the laws of nature. 

The laws of nature (I mean not moral 
but physical laws) are learned, either from 
our own experience, or the experience of 
others, who have had occasion to observe 
the course of nature. 

Ignorance of those laws, or inattention 
to them, is apt to occasion false judgments 
with regard to the objects of sense, especial- 
ly those of hearing and of sight ; which 
false judgments are often, without good 
reason, called fallacies of sense. 

Sounds affect the ear differently, accord- 
ing as the sounding body is before or behind 
us, on the right hand or on the left, near or 
at a great distance. We learn, by the 
manner in which the sound affects the ear, 
on what hand we are to look for the sound- 
ing body ; and inmost cases we judge right. 
But we are sometimes deceived by echoes, 
or by whispering galleries, or speaking 
trumpets, which return the sound, or alter 
its direction, or convey it to a distance with- 
out diminution. 

The deception is still greater, because 



338 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



(_ESSAY II. 



more uncommon, which is said to be pro- 
duced by Gastriloquists — that is, persons 
who have acquired the art of modifying 
their voice, so that it shall affect the ear of the 
hearers, as if it came from another person, 
or from the clouds, or from under the earth- 

I never had the fortune to be acquainted 
with any of these artists, and therefore can- 
not say to what degree of perfection the art 
may have been carried. 

I apprehend it to be only such an im- 
perfect imitation as may deceive those who 
are inattentive, or under a panic. For, if 
it could be carried to perfection, a Gastrho- 
quist would be as dangerous a man in so- 
ciety as was the shepherd Gyges,* who, by 
turning a ring upon his finger, could make 
himself invisible, and, by that means, from 
being the king's shepherd, became King of 
Lydia. [299] 

If the Gastriloquists have all been too 
good men to use their talent to the detri- 
ment of others, it might at least be expected 
that some of them should apply it to their 
own advantage. If it could be brought to 
any considerable degree of perfection, it 
seems to be as proper an engine for draw- 
ing money by the exhibition of it, as leger- 
demain or rope-dancing. But I have never 
heard of any exhibition of this kind, and 
therefore am apt to think that it is too 
coarse an imitation to bear exhibition, even 
to the vulgar. 

Some are said to have the art of imitat- 
ing the voice of another so exactly that in 
the dark they might be taken for the person 
whose voice they imitate. I am apt to 
think that this art also, in the relations 
made of it, is magnified beyond the truth, as 
wonderful relations are apt to be, and that 
an attentive ear would be able to distinguish 
the copy from the original. 

It is indeed a wonderful instance of the 
accuracy as well as of the truth of our senses, 
in things that are of real use in life, that we 
are able to distinguish all our acquaintance 
ty their countenance, by their voice, and 
by their handwriting, when, at the same 
time, we are often unable to say by what 
minute difference the distinction is made ; 
and that we are so very rarely deceived in 
matters of this .kind, when we give proper 
attention to the informations of sense. 

However, if any case should happen, in 
which sounds produced by different causes 
are not distinguishable by the ear, this may 
prove that our senses are imperfect, but not 
that they are fallacious. The ear may not 
be able to draw the just conclusion, but it 
is only our ignorance of the laws of sound 
that leads us to a wrong conclusion. [300] 

Deceptions of sight, arising from igno- 

* See Cicero, De Officiis. The story told by Hero- 
dotus is different— H. 



ranee of the laws of nature, are more numer- 
ous and more remarkable than those of 
hearing. 

The rays of light, which are the means 
of seeing, pass in right lines from the object 
to the eye, when they meet with no obstruc- 
tion ; and we are by nature led to conceive 
the visible object to be in the direction of 
the rays that come to the eye. But the 
rays may be reflected, refracted, or inflected 
in their passage from the object to the eye, 
according to certain fixed laws of nature, 
by which means their direction may be 
changed, and consequently the apparent 
place, figure, or magnitude of the object. 

Thus, a child seeing himself in a mirror, 
thinks he sees another child behind the 
mirror, that imitates all his motions. But 
even a child soon gets the better of this de- 
ception, and knows that he sees himself only. 

All the deceptions made by telescopes, 
microscopes, camera obscuras, magic lan- 
thorns, are of the same kind, though not so 
familiar to the vulgar. The ignorant may 
be deceived by them ; but to those who are 
acquainted with the principles of optics, 
they give just and true information ; and the 
laws of nature by which they are produced, 
are of infinite benefit to mankind. 

There remains another class of errors, 
commonly called deceptions of sense, and 
the only one, as I apprehend, to which that 
name can be given with propriety : I mean 
such as proceed from some disorder or pre- 
ternatural state, either of the external organ 
or of the nerves and brain, which are in- 
ternal organs of perception. 

In a delirium or in madness, perception, 
memory, imagination, and our reasoning 
powers, are strangely disordered and con- 
founded. There are likewise disorders which 
affect some of our senses, while others are 
sound. Thus, a man may feel pain in his 
toes after the leg is cut off. He may feel a 
little ball double by crossing his fingers. [30 1 ] 
He may see an object double, by not direct- 
both eyes properly to it. By pressing the 
ball of his eye, he may see colours that ara 
not real. By the jaundice in his eyes, he 
may mistake colours. These are more 
properly deceptions of sense than any of the 
classes before mentioned. 

We must acknowledge it to be the lot of 
human nature, that all the human faculties 
are liable, by accidental causes, to be hurt 
and unfitted for their natural functions, 
either wholly or in part : but as this imper- 
fection is common to them all, it gives no 
just ground for accounting any of them 
fallacious. 

Upon the whole, it seems to have been a 
common error of philosophers to account 
the senses fallacious. And to this error 
they have added another — that one use of 
reason is to detect the fallacies of sense. 

[299-301] 



chap, xxii.] OF THE FALLACY OF THE SENSES. 



339 



It appears, I think, from what has heen 
said, that there is no more reason to account 
our senses fallacious, than our reason, our 
memory, or any other faculty of judging 
which nature hath given us. They are all 
limited and imperfect ; but wisely suited to 
the present condition of man. We are 
liable to error and wrong judgment in the 
use of them all ; but as little in the inform- 
ations of sense as in the deductions of 
reasoning. And the errors we fall into with 
regard to objects of sense are not corrected 
by reason, but by more accurate attention 
to the informations we may receive by our 
senses themselves. 

Perhaps the pride of philosophers may 
have given occasion to this error. Reason 
is the faculty wherein they assume a supe- 
riority to the unlearned. The informations 
of sense are common to the philosopher and 
to the most illiterate : they put all men 
upon a level ; and therefore are apt to be 
undervalued. We must, however, be be- 
holden to the informations of sense for the 
greatest and most interesting part of our 



knowledge. [302] The wisdom of nature 
has made the most useful things most com- 
mon, and they ought not to be despised on 
that account. Nature likewise forces our 
belief in those informations, and all the 
attempts of philosophy to weaken it are 
fruitless and vain. 

I add only one observation to what has 
been said upon this subject. It is, that there 
seems to be a contradiction between what 
philosophers teach concerning ideas, and 
their doctrine of the fallaciousness of the 
senses. We are taught that the office of 
the senses is only to give us the ideas of 
external objects. If this be so, there can 
be no fallacy in the senses. Ideas can 
neither be true nor false. If the senses 
testify nothing, they cannot give false testi- 
mony. If they are not judging faculties, no 
judgment can be imputed to them, whether 
false or true. There is, therefore, a contra- 
diction between the common doctrine con- 
cerning ideas and that of the fallaciousness 
of the senses. Both may be false, as I believe 
they are, but both cannot be true. [303] 



ESSAY III 
OF MEMORY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THINGS OBVIOUS AND CERTAIN WITH REGARD 
TO MEMORY. 

In the gradual progress of man, from 
infancy to maturity, there is a certain order 
in which his faculties are unfolded, and this 
seems to be the best order we can follow in 
treating of them. 

The external senses appear first ; me- 
mory soon follows — which we are now to 
consider. 

It is by memory that we have an imme- 
diate knowledge of things past.* The 
senses give us information of things only as 
they exist in the present moment ; and this 
information, if it were not preserved by 
memory, would vanish instantly, and leave 
us as ignorant as if it had never been. 

Memory must have an object. Every 
man who remembers must remember some- 



* An immediate knowledge of'apast thing is a con- 
tradiction. For we can only know a thing imme- 
diately, if we know it in itself, or as existing ; but 
what is past cannot be known in itself, for it is non- 
existent.— -H. 



thing, and that which he remembers is 
called the object of his remembrance. In 
this, memory agrees with perception, but 
differs from sensation, which has no object 
but the feeling itself.* [304] 

Every man can distinguish the thing re- 
membered from the remembrance of it. 
We may remember anything which we have 
seen, or heard, or known, or done, or suf- 
fered ; but the remembrance of it is a par- 
ticular act of the mind which now exists, 
and of which we are conscious. To con- 
found these two is an absurdity, which a 
thinking man could not be led into, but by 
some false hypothesis which hinders him 
from reflecting upon the thing which he 
would explain by it. 

In memory we do not find such a train 
of operations connected by our constitution 
as in perception. When we perceive an 
object by our senses, there is, first, some 
impression made by the object upon the 
organ of sense, either immediately, or by 
means of some medium. By this, an im- 



[302-304] 



* But have we only such a mediate knowledge of 
the real object in perception, as we have of the real 
object in memory ? On Reid's error, touching the 
object of memory, see, in general, Note B. — H. 
z 2 



340 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IH* 



pression is made upon the nerves and brain, 
in consequence of which we feel some sensa- 
tion ; and that sensation is attended by that 
conception and belief of the external object 
which we call perception. These opera- 
tions are so connected in our constitution, 
that it is difficult to disjoin them in our con- 
ceptions, and to attend to each without con- 
founding it with the others. But, in the 
operations of memory, we are free from this 
embarrassment ; they are easily distin- 
guished from all other acts of the mind, and 
the names which denote them are free from 
all ambiguity. 

The object of memory, or thing remem- 
bered, must be something that is past ; as 
the object of perception and of conscious- 
ness must be something which is present. 
What now is, cannot be an object of 
memory ; neither can that which is past 
and gone be an object of perception or of 
consciousness. 

Memory is always accompanied with the 
belief of that which we remember, as per- 
ception is accompanied with the belief of 
that which we perceive, and consciousness 
with the belief of that whereof we are con- 
scious. Perhaps in infancy, or in a disorder 
of mind, things remembered may be con- 
founded with those which are merely ima- 
gined ; but in mature years, and in a sound 
state of mind, every man feels that he must 
believe what he distinctly remembers, 
though he can give no other reason of his 
belief, but that he remembers the thing dis- 
tinctly ; whereas, Avhen he merely imagines 
a thing ever so distinctly, he has no belief 
of it upon that account. [305] 

This belief, which we have from distinct 
memory, we account real knowledge, no 
less certain than if it was grounded on de- 
monstration ; no man in his wits calls it in 
question, or will hear any argument against 
it.* The testimony of witnesses in causes 
of life and death depends upon it, and all 
the knowledge of mankind of past events is 
built on this foundation. 

There are cases in which a man's me- 
mory is less distinct and determinate, and 
where he is ready to allow that it may have 
failed him ; but this does not in the least 
weaken its credit, when it is perfectly dis- 
tinct. 

Memory implies a conception and belief 
of past duration ; for it is impossible that a 
man should remember a thing distinctly, 
without believing some interval of duration, 
more or less, to have passed between the 
time it happened, and the presentmoment ; 
and I think it is impossible to shew how 
we could acquire a notion of duration if we 
had no memory. Things remembered 
must be things formerly perceived or 

* But see beW, p. 36?.— H. 



known. I remember the transit of Venus 
over the sun in the year 1769. I. must 
therefore have perceived it at the time it 
happened, otherwise I could not now re- 
member it. Our first acquaintance with 
any object of thought cannot be by remem- 
brance. Memory can only produce. a con- 
tinuance or renewal of a former acquaint- 
ance with the thing remembered. 

The remembrance of a past event is ne- 
cessarily accompanied with the conviction 
of our own existence at the time the event 
happened. I cannot remember a thing 
that happened a year ago, without a con- 
viction as strong as memory can give, that 
I, the same identical person who now re- 
member that event, did then exist. [306] 

What I have hitherto said concerning 
memory, I consider as principles which ap- 
pear obvious and certain to every man who 
will take the pains to reflect upon the oper- 
ations of his own mind. They are facts of 
which every man must judge by what he 
feels ; and they admit of no other proof 
but an appeal to every man's own reflec- 
tion. I shall therefore take them for 
granted in what follows, and shall, first, 
draw some conclusions from them, and 
then examine the theories of philoso- 
phers concerning memory, and concerning 
duration, and our personal identity, of 
which we acquire the knowledge by me- 
mory. 



CHAPTER II. 

MEMORY AN ORIGINAL FACULTY. 

First, I think it appears, that memory 
is an original faculty, given us by the 
Author of our being, of which we can give 
no account, but that we are so made. 

The knowledge which I have of things 
past, by my memory, seems to me as unac- 
countable as an immediate knowledge 
would be of things to come ; * and I can 
give no reason why I should have the one 
and not the other, but that such is the wiil 
of my Maker. I find in my mind a distinct 
conception, and a firm belief of a series of 
past events; but how this is produced I 
know not. I call it memory, but this is 
only giving a name to it — it is not an ac- 
count of its cause. I believe most firmly, 
what I distinctly remember ; but I can 

* An immediate knowledge of firings to come, is 
equally a contradiction as an immediate knowledge of 
tilings past. See the first note of last page. But if, 
as Reid himself allows, memory depend upo:i cer- 
tain enduring affections of the brain, determined by 
past cognition, it seems a strange assertion, on this 
as on other accounts, that the possibility of a know- 
ledge of the future is not more inconceivable than 
of a knowledge of the past. Maupertuis, howrver, 
has advanced a similar doctrine; and some, also, of 
the advocates of animal magnetism. — H. 



[305, 306] 



II.] 



MEMORY AN ORIGINAL FACULTY. 



341 



give no reason of this belief. It is the in- 
spiration of the Almighty that gives me 
this understanding.* [307] 

When I believe the truth of a mathema- 
tical axiom, or of a mathematical proposi- 
tion, I see that it must be so : every man 
who has the same conception of it sees the 
same. There is a necessary and an evident 
connection between the subject and the pre- 
dicate of the proposition ; and I have all 
the evidence to support my belief which I 
can possibly conceive. •. 

When I believe that I washed my hands 
and face this morning, there appears no ne- 
cessity in the truth of this proposition. It 
might be, or it might not be. A man may 
distinctly conceive it without believing it at 
all. How then do I come to believe it ? I 
remember it distinctly. This is all I can 
say. This remembrance is an act of my 
mind. Is it impossible that this act should 
be, if the event had not happened ? I con- 
fess I do not see any necessary connection 
between the one and the other. If any man 
can shew such a necessary connection, then 
I think that belief which we have of what 
we remember will be fairly accounted for ; 
but, if this cannot be done, that belief is un- 
accountable, and we can say no more but 
that it is the result of our constitution. 

Perhaps it may be said, that the ex- 
perience we have had of the fidelity of me- 
mory is a good reason for relying upon its 
testimony. I deny not that this may be a 
reason to those who have had this expe- 
rience, and who reflect upon it. . But 1 be- 
lieve there are few who ever thought of this 
reason, or who found any need of it. It 
must be some very rare occasion that leads 
a man to have recourse to it ; and in those 
who have done so, 'the testimony of memory 
was believed before the experience of its 
fidelity, and that belief could not be caused 
by the experience which came after it. 

We know some abstract truths, by com- 
paring the terms of the proposition which 
expresses them, and perceiving some ne- 
cessary relation or agreement between them. 
It is thus I know that two and three make 
five ; that the diameters of a circle are all 
equal. [308] Mr Locke having discovered 
this source of knowledge, too rashly con- 
cluded that all human knowledge might be 
derived from it ; and in this he has been 
followed very generally — by Mr Hume in 
particular. 

But I apprehend that our knowledge of 
the existence of things contingent can never 
be traced to this source. I know that such 
a thing exists, or did exist. This know- 
ledge cannot be derived from the perception 
of a necessary agreement between existence 



* " The inspiration of the- Almigl.tv giveth 
u nderstandtng."— Job. — H. 

r307-309l 



and the thing that exists, because there is 
no such necessary agreement ; and there- 
fore no such agreement can be perceived 
either immediately or by a chain of reason- 
ing. The thing does not exist necessarily, 
but by the will and power of him that made 
it ; and there is no contradiction follows from 
supposing it not to exist. 

Whence I think it follows, that our know- 
ledge of the existence of our own thoughts, 
of the existence of all the material objects 
about us, and of all past contingencies, 
must be derived, not from a perception of 
necessary relations or agreements, but from 
some other source. 

Our Maker has provided other means for 
giving us the knowledge of these things — 
mean's which perfectly answer their end, 
and produce the effect intended by them. 
But in what manner they do this, is, I fear, 
beyond our skill to explain. We know our 
own thoughts, and the operations of our 
minds, by a power which we call conscious- 
ness : but this is only giving a name to this 
part of our frame. It does not explain its 
fabric, nor how it produces in us an irre- 
sistible conviction of its informations. We 
perceive material objects and their sensible 
qualities by our senses ; but how they give 
us this information, and how they produce 
our belief in it, we know not. We know 
many past events by memory ; but how it 
gives this information, I believe, is inex- 
plicable. 

It is well known what subtile disputes 
were held through all the scholastic ages, 
and are still carried on about the prescience 
of the Deity. [309] Aristotle had taught 
that there can be no certain foreknowledge 
of things contingent ; and in this he has 
been very generally followed, upon no other 
grounds, as I apprehend, but that we can- 
not conceive how such things should be 
foreknown, and therefore conclude it to be 
impossible. Hence has arisen an opposi- 
tion and supposed inconsistency between 
divine prescience and human liberty. Some 
have given up the first in favour of the last, 
and others have given up the last in order 
to support the first. 

It is remarkable that these disputants 
have never apprehended that there is any 
difficulty in reconciling with liberty the 
knowledge of what is past, but only of what 
is future. It is prescience only, and not 
memory, that is supposed to be hostile to 
liberty, and hardly reconcileable to it. 

Yet I believe the difficulty is perfectly 
equal in the one case and in the other. I 
admit, that we cannot account for prescience 
of the actions of a free agent. But I main- 
tain that we can as little account for me- 
mory of the past actions of a free agent, 
If any man thinks he can prove that the 
actions of a free agent cannot be foreknown. 



342 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[[essay III. 



he will find the same arguments of equal 
force to prove that the past actions of a free 
agent cannot he remembered.* It is true, 
that what is past did certainly exist. It is 
no less true that what is future will cer- 
tainly exist. I know no reasoning from the 
constitution of the agent, or from his cir- 
cumstances, that has not equal strength, 
whether it be applied to his past or to his 
future actions. The past was, but now is 
not. The future will be, but now is not. 
The present is equally connected or un- 
connected with both. 

The only reason why men have appre- 
hended so great disparity in cases so per- 
fectly like, I take to be this, That the faculty 
of memory in ourselves convinces us from 
fact, that it is not impossible that an in- 
telligent being, even a finite being, should 
have certain knowledge of past actions of 
free agents, without tracing them from any- 
thing necessarily connected with them. 
[310] But having no prescience in our- 
selves corresponding to our memory of what 
is past, we find great difficulty in admitting 
it to be possible even in the Supreme 
Being. 

A faculty which we possess in some de- 
gree, we easily admit that the Supreme 
Being may possess in a more perfect degree ; 
but a faculty which has nothing corre- 
sponding to it in our constitution, we will 
hardly allow to be possible. We are so 
constituted as to have an intuitive know- 
ledge of many things past ; but we have no 
intuitive knowledge of the future. -f- We 
might perhaps have been so constituted as 
to have an intuitive knowledge of the future ; 
but not of the past ; nor would this consti- 
tution have been more unaccountable than 
the present, though it might be much more 
inconvenient. Had this been our consti- 
tution, we should have found no difficulty 
in admitting that the Deity may know all 
things future, but very much in admitting 
his knowledge of things that are past. 

Our original faculties are all unaccount- 
able. Of these memory is one. He only 
who madethem, comprehends fully howthey 
are made, and how they produce in us not 
only a conception, but a firm belief and 
assurance of things which it concerns us to 
know. 



* This is a marvellous doctrine. The difficulty in 
the two cases is not the same The past, as past, 
whether it has been the action of a free agent or not, 
is now necessary ,- and, though we mny be unable to 
undcrsta d how it can be remembered, the supposi- 
tion of-its r nieml>rance involves no conrad ; ction. 
On the contrary, the future action of a free agent is 
ex hypothesi not a necessary event, i ut an event 
cannot be now certair.ly foreseen, excep it is now 
ce tainly to be j and to say that what is certainly to be 
i> not necessarily to be, s ems a contradiction.— H. 

t If by intuitive be -meant immediate, such a know- 
ledge is impossi le-in either cise; for we can know 
neither the past nor the future- in themselves, but 
only in the present— that i-, mediately.— H. 



CHAPTER III. 



OF DURATION. 



From the principles laid down in the 
first chapter of this Essay, I think it appears 
that odr notion of duration, as well as our 
belief of it, is got by the faculty of memory. * 
It is essential to everything remembered 
that it be something which is past ; and we 
cannot conceive a thing to be past, without 
conceiving some duration, more or less, be- 
tween it and the present. [311] As soon 
therefore as we remember anything, we 
must have both a notion and a 'belief of 
duration. It is necessarily suggested by 
every operation of our memory ; and to that 
faculty it ought to -be ascribed. This is, 
therefore, a proper place to consider what 
is known concerning it. 

Duration, Extension, and Number, are 
the measures of all things subject to men- 
suration. When we apply them to finite 
things which are measured by them, they 
seem of all things to be the most distinctly 
conceived and most within the reach of 
human understanding. 

Extension having three dimensions, has 
an endless variety of modifications, capable 
of being accurately defined ; and their 
various relations furnish the human mind 
with its most ample field of demonstrative 
reasoning. Duration having only one di- 
mension, has fewer modifications ; but these 
are clearly understood — and their relations 
admit of measure, proportion, and demon- 
strative reason in£. 

Number is called discrete quantity, be- 
cause it is compounded of units, which are 
all equal and similar, and it can only be 
divided into units. This is true, in some 
sense, even of fractions of unity, to which 
we now commonly give the name of num- 
ber. For, in every fractional number, the 
unit is supposed to be subdivided into a 
certain number of equal parts, which are 
the units of that denomination, and the 
fractions of that denomination are only di- 
visible into units of the same denomination. 
Duration and extension are not discrete, 
but continued quantity. They consist of 
parts perfectly similar, but divisible without 
end. 

In order to aid our conception of the mag- 
nitude and proportions of the various inter- 
vals of duration, we find it necessary to give 
a name to some known portion of it, such 
as an hour, a day, a year. These we con- 
sider as units, and, by the number of them 
contained in a larger interval, we form a 
distinct conception of its magnitude. [312] 
A similar expedient we find necessary to give 

* Reid <hus apparently>makes Time an empirical 
cr generalized notion. — H. 

[310-312] 



CHAP. III.] 



OF DURATION. 



343 



us a distinct conception of the magnitudes 
and proportions of things extended. Thus, 
number is found necessary, as a common 
measure of extension and duration. But 
this perhaps is owing to the weakness of our 
understanding. It has even been disco- 
vered, by the sagacity of mathematicians, 
that this expedient does not in all cases 
answer its intention. For there are pro- 
portions of continued quantity, which can- 
not be perfectly expressed by numbers ; 
such as that between the diagonal and side 
of a square, and many others. 

The parts of duration have to other parts 
of it the relations of prior and posterior, 
and to the present they have the relations 
of past and future. The notion of past is 
immediately suggested by memory, as has 
been before observed. And when we have 
got the notions of present and past, and of 
prior and posterior, we can from these 
frame a notion of the future ; for the future 
is that which is posterior to the present. 
Nearness and distance are relations equally 
applicable to time and to place. Distance in 
time, and distance in place, are things so 
different in their nature and so like in their 
relation, that it is difficult to determine 
whether the name of distance is applied to 
both in the same, or an anological sense. 

The extension of bodies which we per- 
ceive by our senses, leads us necessarily to 
the conception and belief of a space which 
remains immoveable when the body is re- 
moved. And the duration of events which 
we remember leads us necessarily to the 
conception and belief of a duration which 
would have gone on uniformly though the 
event had never happened. • 

Without space there can be nothing that 
is extended. And without time there 
can be nothing that hath duration. This I 
think undeniable ; and yet we find that ex- 
tension and duration are not more clear and 
intelligible than space and time are dark and 
difficult objects of contemplation. [313] 

As there must be space wherever any- 
thing extended does or can exist, and time 



* If Space and Time be necessary .yeneralizations 
from experience, this is contrary to Keid's own doc- 
trine, that experience can give us no necessary know, 
ledge. If, again, they be necessary- and original 
notions, the account of their origin here given, is in- 
correct. It-should have been said that experience is 
not the source of their existence, but only the occa- 
sion of their manifestation. On this subject, see, 
mstar omnium, Cousin on Locke, in his •• Cours 
de Philosophic," (t. ii., Lecons 17 and. 18.) This 
admirable work has been well transla'ed into Eng- 
lish, by an American, philosopher, Mr Henry; but 
the eloquei ce and precision of the author can only 
be properly appreciaed by those who study the work 
in the original language. The reader may, however, 
consult likewise Stewart's " Philosophical Essays." 
(Essay ii.,'chap. -2,) ,and Hoyer Collard's " Frag- 
ments," (ix. and x.) These auihors, from their mce 
limited acquaintance with the speculations of the Ger- 
man philosophers, are, however, less on a level with 
the problem. — H. 

[313, 314] 



when there is or can be anything that has 
duration, we can set no bounds to either, 
even in our imagination. They defy all 
limitation. The one swells in our concep- 
tion to immensity, the other to eternity. 

An eternity past is an object which we 
cannot comprehend ; but a beginning of 
time, unless we take it in a figurative sense, 
is a contradiction. By a common figure of 
speech, we give the name of time to those 
motions and revolutions by which we mea- 
sure it, such as days and years. We can 
conceive a beginning of these sensible mea- 
sures of time, and say that there was a time 
when they w r ere not, a time undistinguished 
by any motion or change ; but to say that 
there was a time before all time, is a con- 
tradiction. 

All limited duration is comprehended in 
time, and all limited extension in space. 
These, in their capacious womb, contain all 
finite existences, but are contained by none. 
Created things have their particular place 
in space, and their particular place in time ; 
but time is everywhere, and space at alltimes. 
They embrace each the other, and have that 
mysterious union which the schoolmen con- 
ceived between soul and body. The whole 
of each is in every part of the other. 

We are at a loss to what category or class 
of things we ought to refer them. They 
are not beings, but rather the receptacles 
of every created being, without which it 
could not have had the possibility of exist- 
ence. Philosophers have endeavoured to 
reduce all the objects of human thought to 
these three classes, of substances, modes, 
and relations. To which of them shall we 
refer time, space, and number, the most 
common objects of thought ? [314] 

Sir Isaac Newton thought that the Deity, 
by existing everywhere and at all times, 
constitutes time and space, immensity and 
eternity. This probably suggested to his 
great friend, Dr Clarke, what he calls the 
argument a priori for the existence of an 
immense and eternal Being. Space and 
time, he thought, are only abstract or par- 
tial conceptions of an immensity and eter- 
nity which forces itself upon our belief. 
And as immensity and eternity are not 
substances, they must be the attributes of a 
Being who is necessarily immense and 
eternal. These are the speculations of men 
of superior genius. But whether thev be 
as solid as they are sublime, or whether 
they be the wanderings of imagination in a 
region beyond the limits of human under- 
standing, I am unable to determine. 

The schoolmen made eternity to be a 
nunc stajis — that is, a moment of time that 
stands still. This was to put a spoke into 
the wheel of time, and might give satisfac- 
tion to those who are to be satisfied by 
words without meaning. But I can as 



344 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[EssAy in 



easily believe a circle to be a square as 
time to stand still. 

Such paradoxes and riddles, if I may so 
call them, men are involuntarily led into 
when they reason about time and space, 
and attempt to comprehend their nature. 
They are probably things of which the hu- 
man faculties give an imperfect and inade- 
quate conception. Hence difficulties arise 
which we in vain attempt to overcome, and 
doubts which we are unable to resolve. 
Perhaps some faculty which we possess not, 
is necessary to remove the darkness which 
hangs over them, and makes us so apt to 
bewilder ourselves when we reason about 
them. [315] 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF IDENTITY. 

The conviction which every man has of 
his Identity, as far back as his memory 
reaches, needs no aid of philosophy to 
strengthen it; and no philosophy can weaken 
it, without first producing some degree of 
insanity. 

The philosopher, however, may very 
properly consider this conviction as a phe- 
nomenon of human nature worthy of his 
attention. If he can discover its cause, an 
addition is made to his stock of knowledge. 
If not, it must be held as a part of our ori- 
ginal constitution, or an effect of that con- 
stitution produced in a manner unknown 
to us. 

We may observe, first of all, that this con- 
viction is indispensably necessary to all ex- 
ercise of reason. The operations of reason, 
whether in action or in speculation, are 
made up of successive parts. The antece- 
dent are the foundation of the consequent, 
and, without the conviction that the ante- 
cedent have been seen or done by me, I 
could have no reason to proceed to the con- 
sequent, in any speculation, or in any 
active project whatever. 

There can be no memory of what is past 
without the conviction that we existed at 
the time remembered. There may be good 
arguments to convince me that I existed 
before the earliest thing I can remember ; 
but to suppose that my memory reaches a 
moment farther back than my belief and 
conviction of my existence, is a contradic- 
tion. 

The moment a man loses this conviction, 
as if he had drunk the water of Lethe, past 
things are done away ; and, in his own 
belief, he then begins to exist. [316] 
Whatever was thought, or said, or done, 
or suffered before that period, may belong 
to some^ other person ; but he can never 
impute it to himself, or take any subse- 



quent step that supposes it to be his do- 
ing. 

From this it is evident that we must 
have the conviction of our own continued 
existence and identity, as soon as we are 
capable of thinking or doing anything, on 
account of what we have thought, or done, 
or suffered before ; that is, as soon as we 
are reasonable creatures. 

That we may form as distinct a notion as 
we are able of this phenomenon of the human 
mind, it is proper to consider what is meant 
by identity in general, what by our own 
personal identity, and how we are led into 
that invincible belief and conviction which 
every man has of his own personal identity, 
as far as his memory reaches. 

Identity in general, I take to be a rela- 
tion between a thing which is known to 
exist at one time, and a thing which is 
known to have existed at another time.* 
If you ask whether they are one and the 
same, or two different things, every man of 
common sense understands the meaning of 
your question perfectly. Whence we may 
infer with certainty, that every man of 
common sense has a clear and distinct no- 
tion of identity. 

If you ask a definition of identity, I con- 
fess I can give none ; it is too simple a no- 
tion to admit of logical definition. I can 
say it is a relation ; but I cannot find words 
to express the specific difference between 
this and other relations, though I am in no 
danger of confounding it with any other. 
I can say that diversity is a contrary rela- 
tion, and that similitude and dissimilitude 
are another couple of contrary relations, 
which every man easily distinguishes in his 
conception from identity and diversity. 
[317] 

I see evidently that identity supposes 
an uninterrupted continuance of existence. 
That which hath ceased to exist, cannot be 
the same with that which afterwards begins 
to exist ; for this would be to suppose a 
being to exist after it ceased to exist, and 
to have had existence before it was produced, 
which are manifest contradictions. Con- 
tinued uninterrupted existence is therefore 
necessarily implied in identity. 

Hence we may infer that identity cannot, 
in its proper sense, be applied to our pains, 
our pleasures, our thoughts, or any opera- 
tion of our minds. The pain felt this day 
is not the same individual pain which I felt 
yesterday, though they may be similar in 
kind and degree, and have the same cause. 
The same may be said of every feeling and 
of every operation of mind : they are all 



* Identity is a relation between our cognitions of 
a thing, and not letween^.things themselves. It 
would, therefore, have been better in this sentence to 
have said, " a relations Letween a thing as known to 
exist at one time, and a thing as knoun to exist at 
another time." — H. 

[315-317] 



IV.] 



OF IDENTITY. 



345 



successive in their nature, like time itself, 
no two moments of which can be the same 
moment. ■ 

It is otherwise with the parts of absolute 
space. They always are, and were, and 
will be the same. So far, I think, we pro- 
ceed upon clear ground in fixing the notion 
of identity in general. 

It is, perhaps, more difficult to ascertain 
with precision the meaning of Personality; 
but it is not necessary in the present sub- 
ject : it is sufficient for our purpose to 
observe, that all mankind place their per- 
sonality in something that cannot be divided, 
or consist of parts. A part of a person is 
a manifest absurdity. 

When a man loses his estate, his health, 
his strength, he is still the same person, 
and has lost nothing of his personality. If 
he has a leg or an arm cut off, he is the 
same person he was before. The amputated 
member is no part of his person, otherwise 
it would have a right to a part of his 
estate, and be liable for a part of his en- 
gagements ; it would be entitled to a share of 
his merit and demerit — which is manifestly 
absurd. A person is something indivisible, 
and is what Leibnitz calls a monad. [318] 

My personal identity, therefore, implies 
the continued existence of that indivisible 
thing which I call myself. Whatever this 
self may be, it is something which thinks, 
and deliberates, and resolves, and acts, and 
suffers. I am not thought, I am not action, 
I am not feeling ; I am something that 
thinks, and acts, and suffers. My thoughts, 
and actions, and feelings, change every 
moment — they have no continued, but a 
successive existence ; but that self or /, to 
which they belong, is permanent, and has the 
same relation to all the succeeding thoughts, 
actions, and feelings, which I call mine. 

Such are the notions that I have of my 
personal identity. But perhaps it may be 
said, this may all be fancy without reality. 
How do you know ?— what evidence have 
you, that there is such a permanent self 
which has a claim to all the thoughts, 
actions, and feelings, which you call yours ? 

To this I answer, that the proper evi- 
dence I have of all this is remembrance. I 
remember that, twenty years ago, I conversed 
with such a person ; I remember several 
things that passed in that conversation; 
my memory testifies not only that this was 
done, but that it was done by me who now 
remember it. If it was done by me, I must 
have existed at that time, and continued to 
exist from that time to the present : if the 
identical person whom I call myself, had 
not a part in that conversation, my memory 
is fallacious — it gives a distinct and positive 
testimony of what is not true. Every man 
in his senses believes what he distinctly 
remembers, and everything he remembers 
[318-320] 



convinces him that he existed at the time 
remembered. 

Although memory gives the most irre- 
sistible evidence of my being the identical 
person that did such a thing, at such a time, 
I may have other good evidence of things 
which befel me, and which I do not remem- 
ber : I know who bare me and suckled me, 
but I do not remember these events. [319] 

It may here be observed, (though the 
observation would have been unnecessary if 
some great philosophers had not contra- 
dicted it,) that it is not my remembering 
any action of mine that makes me to be 
the person who did it. This remembrance 
makes me to know assuredly that I did it ; 
but I might have done it though I did not 
remember it. That relation to me, which 
is expressed by saying that I did it, would 
be the same though I had not the least re- 
membrance of it. To say that my remem- 
bering that I did such a thing, or, as some 
choose to express it, my being conscious 
that I did it, makes me to have done it, 
appears to me as great an absurdity as it 
would be to say, that my belief that the 
world was created made it to be created. 

When we pass judgment on the identity 
of other persons besides ourselves, we pro- 
ceed upon other grounds, and determine 
from a variety of circumstances, which 
sometimes produce the firmest assurance, 
and sometimes leave room for doubt. The 
identity of persons has often furnished mat- 
ter of serious litigation before tribunals of 
justice. But no man of a sound mind ever 
doubted of his own identity, as far as he 
distinctly remembered. 

The identity of a person is a perfect 
identity ; wherever it is real, it admits of no 
degrees ; and it is impossible that a person 
should be in part the same, and in part 
different ; because a person is a monad, and 
is not divisible into parts. The evidence of 
identity in other persons besides ourselves 
does indeed admit of all degrees, from what 
we account certainty to the least degree of 
probability. But still it is true that the' 
same person is perfectly the same, and can- 
not be so in part, or in some degree only. 

For this cause, I have first considered 
personal identity, as that which is perfect 
in its kind, and the natural measure of that 
which is imperfect, [320] 

We probably at first derive our notion of 
identity from that natural conviction which 
every man has from the dawn of reason of 
his own identity and continued existence. 
The operations of our minds are all succes- 
sive, and have no continued existence. But 
the thinking being has a continued exist- 
ence ; and we have an invincible belief that 
it remains the same when all its thoughts 
and operations change. 

Our judgments of the identity of objects 



646 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay III. 



of sense seem to be formed much upon the 
same grounds as our judgments of the 
identity of other persons besides ourselves. 
Wherever we observe great similarity, 
we are apt to presume identity, if no reason 
appears to the contrary. Two objects ever 
so like, when they are perceived at the same 
time, cannot be the same ; but, if they are 
presented to our senses at different times, 
we are apt to think them the same, merely 
from their similarity. 

Whether this be a natural prejudice, or 
from whatever cause it proceeds, it cer- 
tainly appears in children from infancy ; 
and, when we grow up, it is confirmed in 
most instances by experience ; for we rarely 
find two individuals of the same species that 
are not distinguishable by obvious differ- 
ences. 

A man challenges a thief whom he finds 
in possession of his horse or his watch, only 
on similarity. When the watchmaker 
swears that he sold this watch to such a 
person, his testimony is grounded on simi- 
larity. The testimony of witnesses to the 
identity of a person is commonly grounded 
on no other evidence. 

Thus it appears that the evidence we 
have of our own identity, as far back as we 
remember, is totally of a different kind from 
the evidence we have of the identity of other 
persons, or of objects of sense. The first 
is grounded on memory, and gives un- 
doubted certainty. The last is grounded on 
similarity, and on other circumstances, 
which in many cases are not so decisive as 
to leave no room for doubt. [321] 

It may likewise be observed, that the 
identity of objects of sense is never perfect. 
All bodies, as they consist of innumerable 
parts that may be disjoined from them by 
a great variety of causes, are subject to 
continual changes of their substance, in- 
creasing, diminishing, changing insensibly. 
When such alterations are gradual, because 
language could not afford a different name 
for every different state of such a change- 
able being, it retains the same name, and 
is considered as the same thing. Thus 
we say of an old regiment that it did such a 
thing a century ago, though there now is not 
a man alive who then belonged to it. We say 
a tree is the same in the seed-bed and in the 
forest. A ship of war, which has successively 
changed her anchors, her tackle, her sails, 
her masts, her planks, and her timbers, while 
she keeps the same name, is the same. 

The identity, therefore, which we ascribe 
to bodies, whether natural or artificial, is 
not perfect identity ; it is rather some- 
thing which, for the conveniency of speech, 
we call identity. It admits of a great 
change of the subject, providing the change 
be gradual, sometimes even of a total 
change. And the changes which in com- 



mon language are made consistent with 
identity, differ from those that are thought 
to destroy it, not in kind, but in number 
and degree. It has no fixed nature wheu 
applied to bodies ; and questions about the 
identity of a body are very often questions 
about words. But identity, when applied 
to persons, has no ambiguity, and admits 
not of degrees, or of more and less. It is 
the foundation of all rights and obligations, 
and of all accountableness ; and the notion 
of it is fixed and precise. [322] 



CHAPTER V. 

mr locke's account of the origin op our 
ideas, and particularly of the idea 
of duration. 

It was a very laudable attempt of Mr 
Locke " to inquire into the original of those 
ideas, notions, or whatever you please to 
call them, which a man observes, and is 
conscious to himself he has in his mind, 
and the ways whereby the understanding 
comes to be furnished with them.'* No 
man was better qualified for this investi- 
gation ; and I believe no man ever en- 
gaged in it with a more sincere love of 
truth. 

His success, though great, would, I ap- 
prehend, have been greater, if he had not 
too early formed a system or hypothesis 
upon this subject, without all the caution 
and patient induction, which is necessary 
in drawing general conclusions from facts. 

The sum of his doctrine I take to be 
this — " That all our ideas or notions may 
be reduced to two classes, the simple and 
the complex : That the simple are purely 
the work of Nature, the understanding 
being merely passive in receiving them : 
That they are all suggested by two powers 
of the mind — to wit, Sensation and Reflec- 
tion ;* and that they are the materials of 
all our knowledge. That the other class of 
complex ideas are formed by the under- 
standing itself, which, being once stored 
with simple ideas of sensation and reflec- 
tion, has the power to repeat, to compare, 
and to combine them, even to an almost 
infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure 
new complex ideas : but that is not in the 
power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged 

* That "Locke did not (as even Mr Stewart sup- 
poses) introduce Reflection, either name or thing, 
into the philosophy of mind, see Note I. Nor 
was he even the first explicitly to enunciate Sense 
and Reflection as the two sources of our knowledge; 
for I can shew that this had been done in a far more 
philosophical manner by some of the schoolmen ; 
Reflection with them not being merely, as with 
Locke, a source of adventitious, empirical, or a pos- 
teriori knowledge, but the mean by which we dis- 
close also the native, pure, or a priori cognitions 
which the intellect itself contains. — H. 



f32l, 322"] 



chap, v.] LOCKE'S ACCOUNT OF THE IDEA OF DURATION. 347 



understanding, by any quickness or variety 
of thought, to invent or frame one new 
simple iuea in the mind, not taken in by 
the two ways before-mentioned. [323] That, 
as our power over the material world reaches 
only to the compounding, dividing, and 
putting together, in various forms, the 
matter which God has made, but reaches 
not to the production or annihilation of a 
single atom ; so we may compound, com- 
pare, and abstract the original and simple 
ideas which Nature has given us ; but are 
unable to fashion in our understanding any 
simple idea, not received in by our senses 
from external objects, or by reflection from 
the operations of our own mind about them." 

This account of the origin of all our ideas 
is adopted by Bishop Berkeley and Mr 
Hume; but some very ingenious philoso- 
phers, who have a high esteem of Locke's 
Essay, are dissatisfied with it. 

Dr Hutcheson of Glasgow, in his " In- 
quiry into the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue," 
lias endeavoured to shew that these are 
original and simple ideas, furnished by 
original powers, which he calls the sense of 
beauty and the moral sense. 

Dr Price, in his " Review of the Principal 
Questions and Difficulties in Morals," has 
observed, very justly, that, if we take the 
words sensation and reflection, as Mr Locke 
has defined them in the beginning of his 
excellent Essay, it will be impossible to 
derive some of the most important of our 
ideas from them ; and that, by the under- 
standing — that, is by our judging and reason- 
ing power — we are furnished with many 
simple and original notions. 

Mr Locke says that, by reflection, he 
would be understood to mean " the notice 
which the mind takes of its own operations, 
and the manner of them. " This, I think, we 
commonly call consciousness; from which, 
indeed, we derive all the notions we have 
of the operations of our own minds ; and he 
often speaks of the operations of our own 
minds, as the only objects of reflection. 

When reflection is taken in this confined 
sense, to say that all our ideas are ideas 
either of sensation or reflection, is to say 
that everything we can conceive is either 
some object of sense or some operation of 
our own minds, which is far from being 
true. [324] 

But the word reflection is commonly used 
in a much more extensive sense ; it is ap- 
plied to many operations of the mind, with 
more propriety than to that of conscious- 
ness. We reflect, when we remember, or 
call to mind what is past, and survey it 
with attention. We reflect, when we define, 
when we distinguish, when we judge, when 
we reason, whether about things material 
or intellectual. 

When reflection is taken in this sense, 
[ 323-325] 



which is more common, and therefore more 
proper* than the sense which Mr Locke 
has put upon it, it may be justly said to be 
the only source of all our distinct and ac- 
curate notions of things. For, although our 
first notions of material things are got by 
the external senses, and our first notions of 
the operations of our own minds by con- 
sciousness, these first notions are neither 
simple nor clear. Our senses and our con- 
sciousness are continually shifting from one 
object to another ; their operations are tran- 
sient and momentary, and leave no distinct 
notion of their objects, until they are re- 
called by memory, examined with attention, 
and compared with other things. 

This reflection is not one power of the 
mind ; it comprehends many ; such as re- 
collection, attention, distinguishing, com- 
paring, judging. By these powers our minds 
are furnished not only with many simple 
and original notions, but with all our notions, 
which are accurate and well defined, and 
which alone are the proper materials of 
reasoning. Many of these are neither no- 
tions of the objects of sense, nor of the 
operations of our own minds, .and therefore 
neither ideas of sensation, nor of reflection, 
in the sense that Mr Locke gives to reflec- 
tion. But, if any one chooses to call them 
ideas of reflection, taking the word in the 
more common and proper sense, I have no 
objection. [325] 

Mr Locke seems to me to have used the 
word reflection sometimes in that limited 
sense which he has given to it in the defi- 
nition before mentioned, and sometimes to 
have fallen unawares into the common sense 
of the word ; and by this ambiguity his ac- 
count of the origin of our ideas is darkened 
and perplexed. 

Having premised these things in general 
of Mr Locke's theory of the origin of our 
ideas or notions, I proceed to some observ- 
ations on his account of the idea of dura- 
tion. 

" Reflection," he says, " upon the train of 
ideas, which appear one after another in our 
minds, is that which furnishes us with the 
idea of succession ; and the distance between 
any two parts of that succession, is that we 
call duration." 

If it be meant that the idea of succession 
is prior to that of duration, either in time 
or in the order of nature, this, I think, is 
impossible, because succession, as Dr Price 
justly observes, presupposes duration, and 
can in no sense be prior to it ; and there- 



* This is not correct; and the employment of 
Reflection in another meaning than that of irirpotpii 
Tpo; iaorto — the reflex knowledge or consciousness 
which the mind has of its own affections— is wholly a 
secondary and less proper signification. See Note I. 
I may again notice, that Reid vacillates in the mean- 
ing he gives to the term Reflection. Compare above, 
p. '232, note *, and below, under p. 516.— H. 



34» 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay III 



fore it would be more proper to derive the 
idea of succession from that of duration. 

But how do we get the idea of succession ? 
[t is, says he, by reflecting uponthe train 
of ideas which appear one after another in 
our minds. 

Reflecting upon the train of ideas can be 
nothing butrememberingit, and giving atten- 
tion to what our memory testifies concern- 
ing it ; for, if we did not remember it, we 
could not bave a thought about it. So that 
it is evident that this reflection includes 
remembrance, without which there could be 
no reflection on what is past, and conse- 
quently no idea of succession. [326] 

It may here be observed, that, if we speak 
strictly and philosophically, no kind of suc- 
cession can bean object either of the senses 
or of consciousness ; because the operations 
of both are confined to the present point of 
time, and there can be no succession in a 
point of time ; and on that account the mo- 
tion of a body, which is a successive change 
of place, could not be observed by the senses 
alone without the aid of memory. 

As this observation seems' to contradict 
the common sense and common language of 
mankind, when they affirm that they see a 
ody move, and hold motion to be an. object 
of the senses, it is proper to take notice, that 
this contradiction between the philosopher 
and the vulgar is apparent only, and not 
real. It arises from this, that philosophers 
and the vulgar differ in the meaning they 
put upon what is called the present time, 
and are thereby led to make a different limit 
between sense and memory. 

Philosophers give the name of the pre- 
sent to that indivisible point of time, which 
divides the future from the past : but the 
vulgar find it more convenient in the affairs 
of life, to give the name of present to a por- 
tion of time, which extends more or less, 
according to circumstances, into the past or 
the future. Hence we say, the present 
hour, the present year, the present century, 
though one point only of these periods can 
be present in the philosophical sense. 

It has been observed by grammarians, 
that the present tense in verbs is not con- 
fined to an indivisible point of time, but is 
so far extended as to have a beginning, a 
middle, and an end ; and that, in the most 
copious and accurate languages, these dif- 
ferent parts of the present are distinguished 
by different forms of the verb. 

As the purposes of conversation make it 
convenient to extend what is called the pre- 
sent, the same reason leads men to extend 
the province of sense, and to carry its limit 
as far back as they carry the present. Thus 
a man may say, I saw such a person just 
now : it would be ridiculous to find fault 
with this way of speaking, because it is 
authorized bv custom, and has a distinct 



meaning. [327] But, if we speak philoso- 
phically, the senses do not testify what we 
saw, but only what we see ; what I saw 
last moment I consider as the testimony of 
sense, though it is now only the testimony 
of memory. 

There is no necessity in common life of 
dividing accurately the provinces of sense 
and of memory ; and, therefore ,we assign to 
sense, not an indivisible point of time, but 
that small portion of time which we call the 
present, which has a beginning, a middle, 
and an end. 

Hence, it is easy to see that, though, in 
common language, we speak with perfect 
propriety and truth, when we say that we 
see a body move, and that motion is an ob- 
ject of sense, yet when, as philosophers, we 
distinguish accurately the province of sense 
from that of memory, we can no more see 
what is past, though but a moment ago, 
than we can remember what is present ; so 
that, speaking philosophically, it is only by 
the aid of memory that we discern motion, 
or any succession whatsoever. We see the 
present place of the body ; we remember 
the successive advance it made to that 
place : the first can then only give us a 
conception of motion when joined to the last. 

Having considered the account given by 
Mr Locke, of the idea of succession, we 
shall next consider how, from the idea of 
succession, he derives the idea of duration. 

" The distance," he says, " between any 
parts of that succession, or between, the 
appearance of any two ideas in our minds, 
is that we call duration." 

To conceive this the more distinctly, let 
us call the distance between an idea and 
that which immediately succeeds it, one ele- 
ment of duration ; the distance between an 
idea, and the second that succeeds it, two 
elements, and so on : if ten such elements 
make duration, then one must make dura- 
tion, otherwise duration must be made up of 
parts that have no duration, which is im- 
possible. [328] 

For, suppose a succession of as many 
ideas as you please, if none of these ideas 
have duration, nor any interval of duration 
be between one and another, then it is 
perfectly evident there can be no interval 
of duration between the first and the last, 
how great soever their number be. I con- 
clude, therefore, that there must be dura- 
tion iu every single interval or element of 
which the whole duration is made up. 
Nothing indeed, is more certain, than that 
every elementary part of duration must 
have duration, as every elementary part of 
extension must have extension. 

Now, it must be observed that, in these 

elements of duration, or single intervals of 

successive ideas, there is no succession of 

ideas ; yet we must conceive them to have 

[326-32S] 



chap, v.] LOCKE'S ACCOUNT OF THE IDEA OF DURATION. 349 



duration ; whence we may conclude with 
certainty, that there is a conception of du- 
ration, where there is no succession of ideas 
in the mind. 

We may measure duration by the suc- 
cession of thoughts in the mind, as we mea- 
sure length by inches or feet ; but the notion 
or idea of duration must be antecedent to 
the mensuration of it, as the notion of 
length is antecedent to its being measured. 

Mr Locke draws some conclusions from 
his account of the idea of duration, which 
may serve as a touchstone to discover how 
far it is genuine. One is, that, if it were 
possible for a waking man to keep only one 
idea in his mind without variation, or the 
succession of others, he would have no per- 
ception of duration at all ; and the moment 
he began to have this idea, would seem to 
have no distance from the moment he 
ceased to have it. 

Now, that one idea should seem to have 
no duration, and that a multiplication of that j 
no duration should seem to have duration, 
appears to me as impossible as that the 
multiplication of nothing should produce 
something. [329] 

Another conclusion which the author 
draws from this theory is, that the same 
period of duration appears long to us when 
the succession of ideas in our mind is quick, 
and short when the succession is slow. 

There can be no doubt but the same 
length of duration appears in some circum- 
stances much longer than in others ; the 
time appears long when a man is impatient 
under any pain or distress, or when he is 
eager in the expectation of some happiness. 
On the other hand, when he is pleased and 
happy in agreeable conversation, or delighted 
with a variety of agreeable objects that 
strike his senses or his imagination, time 
flies away, and appears short. 

According to Mr Locke's theory, in the 
first of these cases, the succession of ideas 
is very quick, and in the last very slow. I 
am rather inclined to think that the very 
contrary is the truth. When a man is racked 
with pain, or with expectation, he can 
hardly think of anything but his distress ; 
and the more his mind is occupied by that 
sole object, the longer the time appears. 
On the other hand, when he is entertained 
with cheerful music, with lively conversa- 
tion, and brisk sallies of wit, there seems 
to be the quickest succession of ideas, but 
the time appears shortest. 

I have heard a military officer, a man of 
candour and observation, say, that the time 
he was engaged in hot action always, ap- 
peared to him much shorter than it really 
was. Yet I think it cannot be supposed 
that the succession of ideas was then slower 
than usual. * 



* In travelling, the time^seems verv short, while 
329, 330] 



If the idea of duration were got merely 
by the succession of ideas in our minds, 
that succession must, to ourselves, appear 
equally quick at all times, because the only 
measure of duration is the number of suc- 
ceeding ideas ; but I believe every man 
capable of reflection will be sensible, that 
at one time his thoughts come slowly and 
heavily, and at another time have a much 
quicker and livelier motion. [330] 

I know of no ideas or notions that have 
a better claim to be accounted simple and 
original than those of Space and Time. It 
is essential both to space and time to be 
made up of parts ; but every part is similar 
to the whole, and of the same nature. Dif- 
ferent parts of space, as it has three dimen- 
sions, may differ both in figure and in mag- 
nitude ; but time having only one dimen- 
sion, its parts can differ only in magnitude ; 
and, as it is one of the simplest objects of 
thought, the conception of it must be purely 
the effect of our constitution, and given us 
by some original power of the mind. 

The sense of seeing, by itself, gives us 
the conception and belief of only two dimen- 
sions of extension, but the sense of touch 
discovers three ; and reason, from the con- 
templation of finite extended things, leads 
us necessarily to the belief of an immensity 
that contains them.* In like manner, me- 
mory gives us the conception and belief of 
finite intervals of duration. From the con- 
templation of these, reason leads us neces- 
sarily to the belief of an eternity, which 
comprehends all things that have a begin- 
ning and end.* Our conceptions, both of 
space and time, are probably partial and 
inadequate,-]'- and, therefore, we are apt to 
lose ourselves, and to be embarrassed in 
our reasonings about them. 

Our understanding is no less puzzled 
when we consider the minutest parts of 
time and space than when Ave consider the 
whole. We are forced to acknowledge 
that in their nature they are divisible with- 
out end or limit ; but there are limits be- 
yond which our faculties can divide neither 
the one nor the other. 

It may be determined by experiment, 
what is the least angle under which an 
object may be discerned by the eye, and 
what is the least interval of duration that 
may be discerned by the ear. I believe 
these may be different in different persons : 
But surely there is a limit which no 
man can exceed : and what our faculties 
can no longer divide is still divisible in it- 



passing; very long n retrospect. The cause is ob- 
vious. — H. 

* See above, p. 343, rote *.— H. 

+ They are not probably but necessarily partial 
and inadequate. For we are unable positively to 
conceive Time or Space, either as infinite, (i. e., 
without limits,) or a? not infinite (/. e., as limited.* 
— H. 



350 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay III. 



self, and, by beings of superior perfection, 
may be divided into thousands of parts. 
[331] 

I have reason to believe, that a good eye 
in the prime of life may see an object under 
an angle not exceeding half a minute of a 
degree, and I believe there are some human 
eyes still more perfect. But even this de- 
gree of perfection will appear great, if we 
consider how small a part of the retina of 
the eye it must be which subtends an angle 
of half a minute. 

Supposing the distance between the centre 
of the eye and the retina to be six or seven 
tenths of an inch, the subtense of an angle 
of half a minute to that radius, or the 
breadth of the image of an object seen under 
that angle, will not be above the ten thou- 
sandth part of an inch. This shews such 
a wonderful degree of accuracy in the re- 
fracting power of a good eye, that a pencil 
of rays corning from one point of the object 
shall meet in one point of the retina, so as 
not to deviate from that point the ten 
thousandth part of an inch. It shews, 
likewise, that such a motion of an object as 
makes its image on the retina to move the 
ten thousandth part of,an inch, is discern- 
ible by the mind. 

In order to judge to what degree of ac- 
curacy we can measure short intervals of 
time, it may be observed that one who has 
given attention to the motion of a Second 
pendulum, will be able to beat seconds for 
a minute with a very small error. When 
he continues this exercise long, as for five 
or ten minutes, he is apt to err, more even 
than in proportion to the time— for this 
reason, as I apprehend, that it is difficult to 
attend long to the moments as they pass, 
without wandering after some other object 
of thought. 

I have found, by some experiments, that 
a man may beat seconds for one minute, 
without erring above one second in the 
whole sixty ; and I doubt not but by long 
practice he might do it still more accurately. 
From this I think it follows, that the six- 
tieth part of a second of time is discernible 
bv the human mind. [332] 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF MR LOCKE'S -ACCOUNT OF OUR PERSONAL 
IDENTITY. 

In a long chapter upon Identity and 
Diversity, Mr Locke has made many in- 
genious and just observations, and some 
which I think cannot be defended. I shall 
only take notice of the account he gives of 
our own Personal Identity. His doctrine 
upon this subject has been censured by 
Bishop Butler, in a short essay subjoined to 



his " Analogy," with whose sentiments I 
perfectly agree. 

Identity, as was observed. Chap. IV. of 
this Essay, supposes the continued existence 
of the being of which it is affirmed, and 
therefore can be applied only to things which 
have a continued existence. While any 
being continues to exist, it is the same being : 
but two beings which have a different be- 
ginning or a different ending of their exist- 
ence, cannot possibly be the same. To this 
I think Mr Locke agrees. 

He observes, very justly, that to know 
what is meant by the same person, we must 
consider what the word person stands for ; 
and he defines a person to be an intelligent 
being, endowed with reason and with con- 
sciousness, which last he thinks inseparable 
from thought. 

From this definition of a person, it must 
necessarily follow, that, while the intelligent 
being continues to exist and to be intelli- 
gent, it must be the same person. To say 
that the intelligent being is the person, and 
yet that the person ceases to exist, while 
the intelligent being continues, or that the 
person continues while the intelligent being 
ceases to exist, is to my apprehension a 
manifest contradiction. [333 J 

One would think that the definition of a 
person should perfectly ascertain the nature 
of personal identity, or wherein it consists, 
though it might still be a question how we 
come to know and be assured of our per- 
sonal identity. 

Mr Locke tells us, however, " that per- 
sonal identity — that is, the sameness of a 
rational being — consists in consciousness 
alone, and, as far as this consciousness can 
be extended backwards to any past action 
or thought, so far reaches the identity of 
that person. So that, whatever hath the 
consciousness of present and past actions, 
is the same person to whom they belong."* 

* See Essay, (Book ii. c^. 27, ?. 9.) The passage 
given as a quotation in the .text, is the sum of 
Locke's doctrine, but not exactly in his words. Long 
before Butler, to whom the merit is usually ascribed, 
L cke's doctrine of Personal Identity had been 
attaskeo. and refuted. This was done eren by his 
earliest critic, John Sergeant, whose words, as he 
is.an author wholly unknown to all historians of phi. 
losophy, and his works of the rarest, I shall quote. 
He thus argues : — " The former distinction forelaid, 
he ( Locke) proceeds to make personal identity in man 
to consist in the consciousness that we are the same 
thinking thing in different times and^places. He 
proves it, because consciousness is inseparable from 
thinking, and, as it seems to him, essential to it. 
Perhaps he may have had second thoughts, since he 
writ his 19th Chapter, where, ^ 4, he thought it 
probable that Thinking is but the action, and not the 
essence of the soul. His reason here is — ' Because 
'tis impossible for any to perceive, without perceiving 
that he does perceive,' which I have shewn above to 
be so far lrom impossible, that the contrary is such. 
But, to speak to the point ; Consciousness of any 
action or other accident we have now, or have had, 
is nothing but our knowledge that it belonged to us ; 
and, since we both • gree that we lave no .innate 
knowledges, it follows, that all, both actual and ha!>i- 
tual knowledges, which we have, are acquired orac- 

r 331-3331 



chap, vi.] LOCKE'S ACCOUNT OF OUR PERSONAL IDENTITY. 351 



This doctrine hath some strange conse- 
quences, which the author was aware of, 
Such as, that, if the same consciousness can 
be transferred from one intelligent being to 
another, which he thinks we cannot shew 
to be impossible, then two or twenty intel- 
ligent beings may be the same person. And 
if the intelligent being may lose the con- 
sciousness of the actions done by him, which 
surely is possible, then he is not the person 
that did those actions ; so that one intelli- 
gent being may be two or twenty different 
persons, if he shall so often lose the con- 
sciousness of his former' actions. 

There is another consequence of this 
doctrine, which follows no less necessarily, 
though Mr Locke probably did not see it. 
It is, that a man may be, and at the same 
time not be, the person that did a particular 
action. 

Suppose a brave officer to have been 
flogged when a boy at school, for robbing 
an orchard, to have taken a standard from 
the enemy in his first campaign, and to have 
been made a general in advanced life : Sup- 
pose also, which must be admitted to be 
possible, that, when he took the standard, 



cidental to the subject or knower. Wherefore^the 
man, or that thing, which: is to be the knower, must 
have had individuality, or personality, from other 
principles, antecedently to- this knowledge, called 
consciousness : and, consequently, he will retain his 
identity, or continue the same man, or (which • is 
equivalent) the same person, as long as he has those 
individuating principles. What those principles are 
which constitute this man ; or this knowing indivi. 
duum, I have shewn above, \\ 6, 7. It being then 
most evident, that a man must be the same, ere he can 
know or be conscious that he is the same, all his 
laborious descants and extravagant consequences 
which are built upon this supposition, that conscious- 
ness individuates the person, can need no farther 
refutation." 

The same objection was also made by Leibnitz in 
his strictures on Locke's Essay. Inter alia, he says — 
" Pour ce qui est du soi il sera bon de le distinguer 
de Vapparence du soi et de la consciosite. Le soi fait 
l'identite reelle et physique, et l'apparence du soi, 
accompagnee de laverite, y joint l'identite personelle. 
Ainsi ne voulant point dire, que l'identite personelle 
ne s'etend pas plus loin que le souvenir, je dirois encore 
moms que le soi ou l'identite physique en depend. 
L'identite reele et personelle seprouve le plus certain- 
ment qu'il se.peut en matiere de fait, par la reflexion 
presente et immediate ; elle se prouve suffisament pour 
1'ordinaire par notre souvenir d'intervalle ou par le 
temeignage conspirant des autres. Mais si Dieu 
changeoit extraordinairment l'identite reele, la per- 
sonelle demeuroit, pourvu que l'homme conservat 
les apparences d'identite, tant les internes, (e'est-^a 
dire de la conscience,) que lesexternes, comme celles 
qui consistent dans ce qui paroit aux autres. Ainsi 
la conscience n'est pas le seul moyennle oonstituer 
l'identite personelle, et le rapport d'autrui ou meme 
d'autres marques ypeuvent supplier. Mais il y a dela 
difliculte, s'il se trouve contradiction entreces diver- 
ses-apparei ces. La conscience se peut taire cqmme 
dans l'oubli ; mais-si elle disoit bien clairment des 
choses, qui fussent contrairesaux autres apparences, 
on seroit embarasse" dans la decision et comme sus- 
pends quelques fois entre deux possibilites, cellede 
1'erreur du noire souvenir et celle de quelque decep- 
tion dans les apparences externes." 

For the best criticism of Locke's doctrine of Perso- 
nal Identity, I may, however, reler the reader to M. 
Cousin's " Cours de Philosophic" t. ii„ Leeon xviii., 
p. U 0-198— H. 

[331, 335] 



he was conscious of his having been flogged 
at school, and that when made a general he 
was conscious of his taking the standard, 
but had absolutely lost the consciousness of 
his flogging. [334] 

These things being supposed, it follows, 
from Mr Locke's doctrine, that he who was 
flogged at school is the same person who 
took the standard, and that he who took the 
standard is the same person who was made 
a general. Whence it follows, if there be 
any truth in logic, that the general is the 
same person with him who was flogged 
at school. But the general's consciousness 
does not reach so far back as his flogging — 
therefore, according to Mr Locke's doctrine, 
he is not the person who was flogged. 
Therefore, the general is, and at the same 
time is not the same person with him who 
was flogged at school.* 

Leaving the consequences of this doctrine 
to those who have leisure to trace them, we 
may observe, with regard to the doctrine 
itself— 

First, That Mr Locke attributes to con- 
sciousness the conviction we have of our 
past actions, as if a man may now be con- 
scious of what he did twenty years ago. 
It is impossible to understand the meaning 
of this, unless by consciousness be meant 
memory, the only faculty by which we have an 
immediate knowledge of our past actions. -f* 

Sometimes, in popular discourse, a man 
says he is conscious that he did such a 
thing, meaning that he distinctly remembers 
that he did it. It is unnecessary, in com- 
mon discourse, to fix accurately the limits 
between consciousness and memory. This 
was formerly shewn to be the case with re- 
gard to sense and memory : and, therefore, 
distinct remembrance is sometimes called 
sense, sometimes consciousness, without 
any inconvenience. 

But this ought to be avoided in philoso- 
phy, otherwise we confound the different 
powers of the mind, and ascribe to one what 
really belongs to another. If a man can be 
conscious of what he did twenty years or 
twenty minutes ago, there is no use for 
memory, nor ought we to allow that there 
is any such faculty. [335] The faculties of 
consciousness and memory are chiefly dis- 
tinguished by this, that the first is an im- 
mediate knowledge of the present, the second 
an immediate knowledge of the past. % 

When, therefore, Mr Locke's notion of 



* Compare Buffier's " Traite des premieres Veritez," 
(Remarques sur Locke, § 5f b,) who makes*a similar 
criticism. — JH. 

. t Locke, it. will be remembered, does not, like 
Reid, view con-ciousi ess as a co-ordinate faculty with 
memory ; but under consciousness he properly com- 
prehends the various faculties as so -many special 
modifications. — H. 

% As already frequently . stated, an immediate 
knowledge of the past isicontradictory. This- ob- 
servation Icannot again repeat. See Note B. — H. 



352 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[_essay III. 



personal identity is properly expressed, it is 
that personal identity consists in distinct 
remembrance ; for, even in the popular 
sense, to say that I am conscious of a past 
action, means nothing else than that I dis- 
tinctly remember that I did it. 

Secondly, It may be observed, that, in 
this doctrine, not only is consciousness con- 
founded with memory, but, which is still 
more strange, personal identity is confounded 
with the evidence which we have of our 
personal identity. 

It is very true that my remembrance 
that I did such a thing is the evidence I 
have that I am the identical person who did 
it. And this, I am apt to think, Mr Locke 
meant. But, to say that my remembrance 
that I did such a thing, or my conscious- 
ness, makes me the person who did it, is, in 
my apprehension, an absurdity too gross to 
be entertained by any man who attends to 
the meaning of it ; for it is to attribute to 
memory or consciousness, a strange magi- 
cal power of producing its object, though 
that object must have existed before the 
memory or consciousness which produced it. 

Consciousness is the testimony of one 
faculty ; memory is the testimony of another 
faculty. And, to say that the testimony is 
the cause of the thing testified, this surely 
is absurd, if anything be, and could not 
have been said by Mr Locke, if he had not 
confounded the testimony with the thing 
testified. 

When a horse that was stolen is found 
and claimed by the owner, the only evidence 
he can have, or that a judge or witnesses 
can have that this is the very identical horse 
which was his property, is similitude. [336] 
But would it not be ridiculous from this to 
infer that the identity of a horse consists in 
similitude only ? The only evidence I have 
that I am the identical person who did such 
actions is, that I remember distinctly I did 
them ; or, as Mr Locke expresses it, I am 
conscious I did them. To infer from this, 
that personal identity consists in conscious- 
ness, is an argument which, if it had any 
force, would prove the identity of a stolen 
horse to consist solely in similitude. 

Thirdly, Is it not strange that the same- 
ness or identity of a person should consist 
in a thing which is continually changing, 
and is not any two minutes the same ? 

Our consciousness, our memory, and 
every operation of the mind, are still flow- 
ing, like the water of a river, or like time 
itself. The consciousness I have this 
moment can no more be the same conscious- 
ness I had last moment, than this moment 
can be the last moment. Identity can only 
be affirmed of things which have a continued 
existence. Consciousness, and every kind 
of thought, is transient and momentary, and 
has no continued existence ; and, there- 



fore, if personal identity consisted in con- 
sciousness, it would certainly follow that no 
man is the same person any two moments 
of his life ; and, as the right and justice of 
reward and punishment is founded on per- 
sonal identity, no man could be responsible 
for his actions. 

But, though I take this to be the una- 
voidable consequence of Mr Locke's doc- 
trine concerning personal identity, and 
though some persons may have liked the 
doctrine the better on this account, I am 
far from imputing anything of this kind to 
Mr Locke. He was too good a man not to 
have rejected with abhorrence a doctrine 
which he believed to draw this consequence 
after it. [337] 

Fourthly, There are many expressions 
used by Mr Locke, in speaking of personal 
identity, which, to me, are altogether unin- 
telligible, unless we suppose that he con- 
founded that sameness or identity which we 
ascribe to an individual, with the identity 
which, in common discourse, is often ascribed 
to many individuals of the same species. 

When we say that pain and pleasure, 
consciousness and memory, are the same in 
all men, this sameness can only mean simi- 
larity, or sameness of kind ; but, that the 
pain of one man can be the same individual 
pain with that of another man, is no less 
impossible than that one man should be 
another man ; the pain felt by me yester- 
day can no more be the pain I feel to-day, 
than yesterday can be this day; and the 
same thing may be said of every passion 
and of every operation of the mind. The 
same kind or species of operation may be 
in different men, or in the same man at 
different times ; but it is impossible that the 
same individual operation should be in dif- 
ferent men, or in the same man at different 
times. 

When Mr Locke, therefore, speaks of "the 
same consciousness being continued through 
a succession of different substances ;" when 
he speaks of " repeating the idea of a past 
action, with the same consciousness we had 
of it at the first," and of " the same con- 
sciousness extending to actions past and to 
come" — these expressions are to me unin- 
telligible, unless he means not the same in- 
dividual consciousness, but a consciousness 
that is similar, or of the same kind. 

If our personal identity consists in con- 
sciousness, as this consciousness cannot be 
the same individually any two moments, 
but only of the same kind, it would follow 
that we are jnot for any two moments the 
same individual persons, but the same kind 
of persons. 

As our consciousness sometimes ceases 

to exist, as in sound sleep, our personal 

identity must cease with it. Mr Locke 

allows, that the same thing cannot have 

[336, 337] 



CHAP. VII.] 



THEORIES CONCERNING MEMORY. 



353 



two beginnings of existence ; so that our 
identity would be irrecoverably gone every 
time we cease to think, if it was but for a 
a moment.* [338] 



CHAPTER VII. 

THEORIES CONCERNING MEMORY. 

The common theory of ideas — that is, 
of images in the brain or in the mind, of 
all the objects of thought — has been very 
generally applied to account for the facul- 
ties of memory and imagination, as well as 
that of perception by the senses. 

The sentiments of the Peripatetics are 
expressed by Alexander Aphrodisiensis, 
one of the earliest Greek commentators on 
Aristotle, in these words, as they are trans- 
lated by Mr Harris in his " Hermes :" — 
" Now, what Phancy or Imagination is, we 
may explain as follows : — We may conceive 
to be formed within us, from the operations of 
our senses about sensible objects, some Im- 
pression, as it were, or Picture, in our origi- 
nal Sensorium, being a relict of that motion 
caused within us by the external object ; a 
relict which, when the external object is 
no longer present, remains, and is still 
preserved, being, as it were, its Image, 



* It is here proper to insert Keid's remarks on 
Personal Identity, as published by Lord Kames, in 
his " Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural 
Religion," (third edition, p. 204.) These, perhaps, 
might have more appropriately found their place in 
the Correspondence of our Author. 

" To return to our subject," says his Lordship, 
" Mr Locke, writing on personal identity, has fallen 
6hort of his usual accuracy. He inadvertently jumbles 
together the identity that is nature's work, with 
our knowledge of it. Nay, he expresses himself some- 
times as if identity had no other foundation than 
that knowledge. 1 am favoured by l)r Reid with the 
following thoughts on personal identity : — 

"' All men agree that personality is indivisible ; a 
part of a person is an absurdity. A man who loses 
his estate, his health, an arm, or a leg, continues stiil 
to be the same person. My personal identity, therefore, 
is the continued existence of that indivisible thing 
which I call myself. lam not thought; 1 am not 
action ; I am not feeling; but I think, and act, and 
feel. Thoughts, actions, feelings, change every 
moment; but self, to which they belong, is perman- 
ent. If it be asked how I know that it is permanent, 
the answer is, that ! know it from memory. Every- 
thing I remember to have seen, or heard, or done, or 
suffered, convinces me that I existed at the time 
remembered. But, though it is from memory that I 
have the knowledge of my personal identity, yet per. 
sonal identity must exist'in nature, independent of 
memory ; otherwise, I should only be the same per- 
son as far as my memory serves me ; and what would 
become of my existence during the intervals wherein 
my memory has failed me ? My rememberance of any 
ol my actions does not make me to be the person who 
did the action, but only makes me know that I was 
the person who did it. And yet it w^s Mr Locke's 
opinion, that my remembrance of an action is what 
makes me to be the person who did it ; a pregnant 
instance that even men of the greatest genius may 
sometimes fall into an absurdity. Is it not an obvious 
corollary, from Mr Locke's opinion, that he never 
was born ? He could not remember his birth ; and, 
therefore, was not the person born at such a place 
and at such a time.' "— H. 
T338, 339] 



and which, by being thus preserved, be- 
comes the cause of our having Memory. 
Now, such a sort of relict, and, as it were, 
impression, they call Phancy or Imagina- 
tion."" 

Another passage from Alcinous Of the 
Doctrines of Plato, chap. 4, shews the agree- 
ment of the ancient Platonists and Peripa- 
tetics in this theory : — " When the form or 
type of things is imprinted on the mind by 
the organs of the senses, and so imprinted 
as not to be deleted by time, but preserved 
firm and lasting, its preservation is called 
Memory."* [339] 

Upon this principle, Aristotle imputes the 
shortness of memory in children to this 
cause — that their brain is too moist and soft 
to retain impressions made upon it: and 
the defect of memory in old men he imputes, 
on the contrary, to the hardness and rigidity 
of the brain, which hinders its receiving 
any durable impression, -f- 

This ancient theory of the cause of 
memory is defective in two respects : First, 
If the cause assigned did really exist, it by 
no means accounts for the phsenomenon ; 
and, secondly, There is no evidence, nor 
even probability, that that cause exists. 

It is probable that in perception some 
impression is made upon the brain as well 
as upon the organ and nerves, because all 
the nerves terminate iu the brain, and be- 
cause disorders and hurts of the brain are 
found to affect our powers of perception 
when the external organ and nerve are 
found ; but we are totally ignorant of the 
nature of this impression upon the brain : 
it can have no resemblance to the object 
perceived, nor does it in any degree ac- 
count for that sensation and perception 
which are consequent upon it. These things 
have been argued in the second Essay, and 
shall now be taken for granted, to prevent 
repetition. 

If the impression upon the brain be insuf- 
ficient to account for the perception of ob- 
jects that are present, it can as little account 
for the memory of those that are past. 

So that, if it were certain that the im- 
pressions made on the brain in perception 
remain as long as there is any memory of 
the object, all that could be inferred from 
this, is, that, by the laws of Nature, there 
is a connection established between that im- 
pression, and the rememberance of that 
object. But how the impression contributes 



* The inference founded on these passages, is alto, 
gether erroneous. See Note K.— H. 

f In this whole statement Reid is wrong. Tn the 
first place, Aristotle did not impute the defect of 
memory in children and old persons to any const tu- 
tion of the Brain ; for, in his doctrine, the Heart, 
and not the Brain, is the primary sensorium in which 
the impression is made. In the second place, the 
term impression (tuxos), is used by Aristotle in an 
analogical, not in a literal signification, See Note K. 
— H. 

<2 A 



354 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay III. 



to this remembrance, we should be quite 
ignorant ; it being impossible to discover 
hew thought of any kind should be pro- 
duced, by an impression on the brain, or 
upon any part of the body. [340] 

To say that this impression is memory, is 
absurd, if understood literally. If it is only 
meant that it is the cause of memory, it 
ought to be shewn how it produces this 
effect, otherwise memory remains as unac- 
countable as before. 

If a philosopher should undertake to ac- 
count for the force of gunpowder in the 
discharge of a musket, and then tell us 
gravely that the cause of this phenomenon 
is the drawing of the trigger, we should not 
be much wiser by this account. As little 
are we instructed in the cause of memory, 
by being told that it is caused by a certain 
impression on the brain. For, supposing 
that impression on the brain were as neces- 
sary to memory as the drawing of the trigger 
is to the discharge of the musket, we are 
still as ignorant as we were how memory is 
produced ; so that, if the cause of memory, 
assigned by this theory, did really exist, it 
does not in any degree account for memory. 

Another defect in this theory is, that 
there is no evidence nor probability that 
the cause assigned does exist ; that is, that 
the impression made upon the brain in per- 
ception remains after the object is removed. 

That impression, whatever be its nature, 
is caused by the impression made by the 
object upon the organ of sense, and upon 
the nerve. Philosophers suppose, without 
any evidence, that, when the object is re- 
moved, and the impression upon the organ 
and nerve ceases, the impression upon the 
brain continues, and is permanent ; that is, 
that, when the cause is removed, the effect 
continues. The brain surely does not ap- 
pear more fitted to retain an impression 
than the organ and nerve. 

But, granting that the impression upon 
the brain continues after its cause is re- 
moved, its effects ought to continue while 
it continues ; that is, the sensation and 
perception should be as permanent as the 
impression upon the brain, which is sup- 
posed to be their cause. But here again 
the philosopher makes a second supposition, 
with as little evidence, but of a contrary 
nature — to wit, that, while the cause re- 
mains, the effect ceases. [341] 
■ If this should be granted also, a third 
must be made — That the same cause which 
at first produced sensation and perception, 
does afterwards produce memory — an opera- 
tion essentially different, both from sensa- 
tion and perception. 

A fourth supposition must be made — 
That this cause, though it be permanent, 
does not produce its effect at all times ; it 
must be like an inscription which is some- 



times covered with rubbish, and on other 
occasions made legible ; for the memory of 
things is often interrupted for a long time, 
and circumstances bring to our recollection 
what had been long forgot. After all, many 
things are remembered which were never 
perceived by the senses, being no objects of 
sense, and therefore which could make no 
impression upon the brain by means of the 
senses. 

Thus, when philosophers have piled one 
supposition upon another, as the giants piled 
the mountains in order to scale the heavens, 
all is to no purpose — memory remains unac- 
countable ; and we know as little how we 
remember things past, as how we are con- 
scious of the present. 

But here it is proper to observe, that, 
although impressions upon the brain give 
no aid in accounting for memory, yet it is 
very probable that, in the human frame, 
memory is dependent on some proper state 
or temperament of the brain.* 

Although the furniture of our memory 
bears no resemblance to any temperament 
of brain whatsoever, as indeed it is impos- 
sible it should, yet nature may have sub- 
jected us to this law, that a certain consti- 
tution or state of the brain is necessary to 
memory. That this is really the case, 
many well-known facts lead us to con- 
clude. [342] 

It is possible that, by accurate observa- 
tion, the proper means may be discovered 
of preserving that temperament of the brain 
which is favourable to memory, and of 
remedying the disorders of that tempera- 
ment. This would be a very noble im- 
provement of the medical art. But, if it 
should ever be attained, it would give no 
aid to understand how one state of the brain 
assists memory, and another hurts it. 

I know certainly, that the impression 
made upon my hand by the prick of a pin 
occasions acute pain. But can any philo- 
sopher shew how this cause produces the 
effect ? The nature of the impression is 
here perfectly known ; but it gives no help 
to understand how that impression affects 
the mind ; and, if we knew as distinctly that 
state of the brain which causes memory, 
we should still be as ignorant as before how 
that state contributes to memory. We 
might have been so constituted, for anything 
that I know, that the prick of a pin in the 
hand, instead of causing pain, should cause 
remembrance ; nor would that constitution 
be more unaccountable than the present. 

The body and mind operate on each other, 



* Nothing more was meant by the philosopher in 
question, than that memory is, as Reid himself ad. 
mits, dependent on a certain state ot the brain, and 
on some unknown effect determined in it, to which 
they gave the metaphorical name — impression, trace, 
type, &C.—H. 



[340-342] 



CHAP. VII.] 



THEORIES CONCERNING MEMORY. 



355 



according to fixed iaws of nature ; and it is 
the business of a philosopher to discover 
those laws by observation and experiment : 
but, when he has discovered them, he must 
rest in them as facts whose cause is in- 
scrutable to the human understanding. 

Mr Locke, and those who have followed 
him, speak with more reserve than the 
ancients,* and only incidentally, of impres- 
sions on the brain as the cause of memory, 
and impute it rather to our retaining in our 
minds the ideas got either by sensation or 
reflection. 

This, Mr Locke says, may be done two 
ways — " First, By keeping the idea for some 
time actually in view, which is called con- 
templation ; Secondly, By the power to re- 
vive again in our minds those ideas which, 
after imprinting, have disappeared, or have 
been, as it were, laid out of sight ; and this 
is memory, which is, as it were, the store- 
house of our ideas." [343] 

To explain this - more distinctly, he imme- 
diately adds the following observation : — 
" But our ideas being nothing but actual 
perceptions in the mind, which cease to be 
anything when there is no perception of 
them, this laying up of our ideas in the 
repository of the memory signifies no more 
but this, that the mind has a power, in 
many cases, to revive perceptions which it 
once had, with this additional perception 
annexed to them, that it has had them 
before ; and in this sense it is, that our ideas 
are said to be in our memories, when indeed 
they are actually nowhere ; but only there 
is an ability in the mind, when it will, to 
revive them again, and, as it were, paint 
them anew upon itself, though some with 
more, some with less difficulty, some more 
lively, and others more obscurely." 

In this account of memory, the repeated 
use of the phrase, as it were, leads one to 
judge that it is partly figurative ; we must 
therefore endeavour to distinguish the figu- 
rative part from the philosophical. The 
first, being addressed to the imagination, 
exhibits a picture of memory, which, to 
have its effect, must be viewed at a proper 
distance and from a particular point of 
view. The second, being addressed to the 
understanding, ought to bear a near inspec- 
tion and a critical examination. 

The analogy between memory and a re- 
pository, and between remembering and 
retaining, is obvious, and is to be found in 
all languages, it being very natural to ex- 
press the operations of the mind by images 
taken from things material. But, in phi- 
losophy we ought to draw aside the veil of 
imagery, and to view them naked. 

When, therefore, memory is said to be a 
repository or storehouse of ideas, where they 

I* This is .hardly correct See Note K.— H. 
[343-345] 



are laid up when not perceived, and again 
brought forth as there is occasion, I take 
this to be popular and rhetorical. [344] 
For the author tells us, that when they are 
not perceived, they are nothing, and no- 
where, and therefore can neither be laid up 
in a repository, nor drawn out of it. 

But we are told, " That this laying up of 
our ideas in the repository of the memory 
signifies no more than this, that the mind 
has a power to revive perceptions, which it 
once had, with this additional perception 
annexed to them, that it has had them 
before." This, I think, must be understood 
literally and philosophically. 

But it seems to me as difficult to revivf 
things that have ceased to be anything, as 
to lay them up in a repository, or to bring 
them out of it. When a thing is once 
annihilated, the same thing cannot be again 
produced, though another thing similar to 
it may. Mr Locke, in another place, 
acknowledges that the same thing cannot 
have two beginnings of existence ; and that 
things that have different beginnings are 
not the same, but diverse. From this it 
follows, that an ability to revive our ideas 
or perceptions, after they have ceased to be, 
can signify no more hut an ability to create 
new ideas or perceptions similar to those we 
had before. 

They are said " to be revived, with this 
additional perception, that we have had them 
before." This surely would be a fallacious 
perception, since they could not have two 
beginnings of existence : nor could we be- 
lieve them to have two beginnings of exist- 
ence. We can only believe that we had 
formerly ideas or perceptions very like to 
them, though not identically the same. But 
whether we perceive them to be the same, 
or only like to those we had before, this 
perception, one would think, supposes a 
remembrance of those we had before, other- 
wise the similitude or identity could not be 
perceived. 

Another phrase is used to explain this 
reviving of our perceptions — " The mind, 
as it were, paints them anew upon itself.' - 
[345] There may be something figurative 
in this ; but, making due allowance for that, 
it must imply that the -mind, which paints 
the things that have ceased to exist, must 
have the memory of what they were, since 
every painter must have a copy either before 
his eye, or in his imagination and memory. 

These remarks upon Mr Locke's account 
of memory are intended to shew that his 
system of ideas gives no light to this faculty, 
but rather tends to darken it ; as little does 
it make us understand how we remember, 
and by that means have the certain know- 
ledge of things past. 

Every man knows what memory is, and 
has a distinct notion of it. But when Mr 
2 a 2 



356 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 111. 



Locke speaks of a power to revive in the 
mind those ideas which, after imprinting, 
have disappeared, or have been, as it were, 
laid out of sight, one would hardly know 
this to be memory, if he had not told us. 
There are other things which it seems to 
resemble at least as much. I see before 
me the picture of a friend. I shut my eyes, 
or turn them another way, and the picture 
disappears, or is, as it were, laid out of sight. 
I have a power to turn my eyes again to- 
wards the picture, and immediately the per- 
ception is revived. But is this memory ? 
No surely ; yet it answers the definition as 
well as memory itself can do. " 

We may observe, that the word percep- 
tion is used by Mr Locke in too indefinite 
a way, as well as the word idea. 

Perception, in the chapter upon that sub- 
ject, is said to be the first faculty of the 
mind exercised about our ideas. Here we 
are told that ideas are nothing but percep- 
tions. Yet, I apprehend, it would sound 
oddly to say, that perception is the first 
faculty of the mind exercised about percep- 
tion ; and still more strangely to say, that 
ideas are the first faculty of the mind ex- 
ercised about our ideas. But why should 
not ideas be a faculty as well as perception, 
if both are the same ?f [346] 

Memory is said to be a power to revive 
our perceptions. Will it not follow from 
this, that everything that can be remem- 
bered is a perception ? If this be so, it will 
be difficult to find anything in nature but 
perceptions. $ 

Our ideas, we are told, are nothing but 
actual perceptions ; but, in many places of 
the Essay, ideas are said to be the objects 
of perception, and that the mind, in all its 
thoughts and reasonings, has no other im- 
mediate object which it does or can con- 
template but its own ideas. Does it not 
appear from.this, either that Mr Locke neld 
the operations of the mind to be the same 
thing with the objects of those operations, § 
or that he used the word idea sometimes in 
one sense and sometimes in another, with- 
out any intimation, and probably without 
any apprehension of its ambiguity ? It is 
au article of Mr Hume's philosophy, that 
there is no distinction between the opera- 
tions of the mind and their objects. § But 
I see no reason to impute this opinion to 
Mr Locke. I rather think that, notwith- 

* To some of the preceding* strictures on Locke's 
account of memory, excuses might competently be 
pleaded. — H. 

t This cntirurn only shews the propriety of the 
distinction of perception and percept. Locke and 
other-philosophers use the word perception, l 3 , for 
the act or faculty of perceiving; v°, for that which is 
perceived— the idea in their doctrine ; and 3°, for 
either or both indifferentlv.— H. 

4: See above p. 222, b, note * ; p. 280, a. note*.— H. 
^. The term object being then used lor the imme- 
diate object— viz., that of which we are conscious. 
— H 



standing his "great judgment and candour, 
his understanding was entangled by the 
ambiguity of the word idea, and that most 
of the imperfections of his Essay are owing 
to that cause. 

Mr Hume saw farther into the conse- 
quences of the common system concerning 
ideas than any author bad done before him. 
He saw the absurdity of making every object 
of thought double, and splitting it into a 
remote object, which has a separate and 
permanent existence, and an immediate 
object, called an idea or impression, which 
is an image of the former, and has no ex- 
istence, but when we are conscious of it. 
According to this system, we have no in- 
tercourse with the external world, but by 
means of the internal world of ideas, which 
represents the other to the mind. 

He saw it was necessary to reject one 
of these worlds as a fiction, and the question 
was, Which should be rejected ? — whether 
all mankind, learned and unlearned, had 
feigned the existence of the external world 
without good reason ; or whether philoso- 
phers had feigned the internal world of ideas, 
in order to account for the intercourse of 
the mind with the external ? [347] Mr 
Hume adopted the first of these opinions, 
and employed his reason and eloquence in 
support of it. 

Bishop Berkeley had gone so far in the 
same track as to reject the material world 
as fictitious ; but it was left to Mr Hume 
to complete the system. 

According to his system, therefore, im- 
pressions and ideas in his own mind are 
the only things a man can know or can 
conceive. Nor are these ideas representa- 
tives, as they were in the old system. 
There is nothing else in nature, or, at least, 
within the reach of our faculties, to be re- 
presented. What the vulgar call the per- 
ception of an external object, is nothing but 
a strong impression upon the mind. What 
we call the remembrance of a past event, 
is nothing but a present impression or idea, 
weaker than the former. And what we call 
imagination, is still a present idea, but 
weaker than that of memory. 

That I may not do him injustice, these 
are his words in his " Treatise of Human 
Nature," [vol. I.] page 193. 

" We find by experience that, when any 
impression has been present with the mind, 
it again makes its appearance there as an 
idea ; and this it may do after two different 
ways, either when in its new appearance it 
retains a considerable degree of its first 
vivacity and is somewhat intermediate be- 
twixt an impression and an.idea, or when it 
entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect 
idea. The faculty by which we repeat our 
impressions in the first manner, is called 
the memory, and the other the imagination." 
[346, 347] 



CHAP. VII. 



THEORIES CONCERNING MEMORY. 



357 



Upon this account of memory and imagi- 
nation, I shall make some remarks. [348] 
First, I wish to know what we are here 
to understand by experience ? It is said, 
we find all this by experience ; and I con- 
ceive nothing can be meant by this expe- 
rience but memory — not that memory 
which our author defines, but memory in 
the common acceptation of the word. Ac- 
cording to vulgar apprehension, memory is 
an immediate knowledge of something past. 
Our author does not admit that there is 
any such knowledge in the human mind. 
He maintains that memory is nothing but 
a present idea or impression. But, in de- 
fining what he takes memory to be, he takes 
for granted that kind of memory which he 
rejects. For, can we find by experience, 
that an impression, after its first appearance 
to the mind, makes a second and a third, with 
different degrees of strength and vivacity, 
if we have not so distinct a remembrance of 
its first appearance as enables us to know 
it upon its second and third, notwithstand- 
ing that, in the interval, it has undergone 
a very considerable change ?* 

All experience supposes memory; and 
there can be no such thing as experience, 
without trusting to our own memory, or 
that of others. So that it appears, from 
Mr Hume's account of this matter, that he 
found himself to have that kind of memory 
which he acknowledges and defines, by ex- 
ercising that kind which he rejects. 

Se-ondl'/, What is it we find by expe- 
rience or memory ? It is, " That, when an 
impression has been present with the mind, 
it again makes its appearance there as an 
idea, and that after two different ways." 

If experience informs us of this, it cer- 
tainly deceives us ; for the thing is impos- 
sible, and the author shews it to be so. 
Impressions and ideas are fleeting, perish- 
able things, which have no existence but 
when we are conscious of them. If an im- 
pression could make a second and a third 
appearance to the mind, it must have a 
continued existence during the interval of 
these appearances, which Mr Hume ac- 
knowledges to be a gross absurdity. [349] 
It seems, then, that we find, by experience, 
a thing which is impossible. We are im- 
posed upon by our experience, and made to 
believe contradictions. 

Perhaps it may be said, that these dif- 
ferent appearances of the impression are not 
to be understood literally, but figuratively ; 
that the impression is personified, and made 
to appear at different times and in different 
habits, when no more is meant but that an 
impression appears at one time ; afterwards 
a thing of a middle nature, between an im- 
pression and an idea, which we call memory ; 



[318-350] 



* S^e NoteB.— H. 



and, last of all, a perfect idea, which we call 
imagination : that this figurative meaning 
agrees best with the last sentence of the 
period, where we are told that memory and 
imagination are faculties, whereby we repeat 
our impresions in a more or less lively 
manner. To repeat an impression is a figur- 
ative way of speaking, which signifies making 
a new impression similar to the former. 

If, to avoid the absurdity implied in the 
literal meaning, we understand the philo- 
sopher in this figurative one, then his defini- 
tions of memory and imagination, when 
stripped of the figurative dress, will amount 
to this, That memory is the faculty of 
making a weak impression, and imagination 
the faculty of making an impression still 
weaker, after a corresponding strong one. 
These definitions of memory and imagina- 
tion labour under two defects : First, That 
they convey no notion of the thing defined ; 
and, Secondly, That they may be applied to 
things of a quite different nature from those 
that are defined. 

When we are said to have a faculty of 
making a weak impression after a corre- 
sponding strong one, it would not be easy 
to conjecture that this faculty is memory. 
Suppose a man strikes his head smartly 
against the wall, this is an impression ; 
now, he has a faculty by which he can 
repeat this impression with less force, so 
as not to hurt him : this, by Mr Hume's 
account, must be memory. [350] He 
has a faculty by which he can just touch 
the wall with his head, so that the impres- 
sion entirely loses its vivacity. This surely 
must be imagination ; at least, it comes as 
near to the definition given of it by Mr 
Hume as anything I can conceive. 

Thirdly, We may observe, that, when we 
are told that we have a faculty of repeating 
our impressions in a more or less lively 
manner, this implies that we are the effi- 
cient causes of our ideas of memory and 
imagination ; but this contradicts what the 
author says a little before, where he proves, 
by what he calls a convincing argument, 
that impressions are the cause of their cor- 
responding ideas. The argument that proves 
this had need, indeed, to be very con- 
vincing ; whether we make the idea to be 
a second appearance of the impression, or a 
new impression similar to the former. 

If the first be true, then the impression 
is the cause of itself. If the second then 
the impression, after it is gone and has no 
existence, produces the idea. Such are the 
mysteries of Mr Hume's philosophy. 

It may be observed, that the common 
system, that ideas are the only immediate 
objects of thought, leads to scepticism with 
regard to memory, as well as with regard to 
the objects of sense, whether those ideas 
are placed in the mind or in the brain. 



358 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay III. 



Ideas are said to be tilings internal and 
present, which have no existence but during 
the moment they are in the mind. The 
objects of sense are things external, which 
ha^e a continued existence. When it is 
maintained that all that we immediately 
perceive is only ideas or phantasms, how 
can we, from the existence of those phan- 
tasms, conclude the existence of an external 
world corresponding to them ? 

This difficult question seems not to have 
occurred to the Peripatetics.* Des Cartes 
saw the difficulty, and endeavoured to find 
out arguments by which, from the existence 
of our phantasms or ideas, we might infer 
the existence of external objects. [351] The 
same course was followed by Malebranche, 
Arnauld, and Locke; but Berkeley and 
Hume easily refuted all their arguments, 
and demonstrated that there is no strength 
in them. 

The same difficulty with regard to mem- 
ory naturally arises from the system of 
ideas ; and the only reason why it was not 
observed by philosophers, is, because they 
give less attention to the memory than to 
the senses ; for, since ideas are things pre- 
sent, how can we, from our having a certain 
idea piesently in our mind, conclude that an 
event really happened ten or twenty years 
ago, corresponding to it ? 

There is the same need of arguments to 
prove, that the ideas of memory are pictures 
of things that really did happen, as that the 
ideas of sense are pictures of external objects 
which now exist. In both cases, it will be 
impossible to find any argument that has 
real weight. So that this hypothesis leads 
us to absolute scepticism, with regard to 
those things which we most distinctly re- 
member, no less than with regard to the 
external objects of sense. 

It does not appear to have occurred either 
to Locke or to Berkeley, that their system 
has the same tendency to overturn the tes- 
timony of memory as the testimony of the 
senses. 

Mr Hume saw farther than both, and 
found this consequence of the system of 
ideas perfectly corresponding to his aim of 
establishing universal scepticism. Hissys- 
stem is therefore more consistent than 
theirs, and the conclusions agree better with 
the premises. 

But, if we should grant to Mr Hume that 
our ideas of memory afford no just ground 
to believe the past existence of things which 
we remember, it may still be asked, How it 

* This is not correct. See above, p. 2R5, note \. 
To that note I may add, that no orthodox Catholic 
could be an Idealist. It was only the doctrine of 
transsubstantiation that prevented Malebranche from 
pre-occupying the theory of Berkeley and Collier, 
wh'ch was in fact his own, with the transcendent 
reality of a material world left out, as a Protectant 
hors d'amvre. This, it is curious, has never been 
observed. See Note P. — H. 



comes to pass that perception and memory 
are accompanied with belief, while bare ima- 
gination is not ? Though this belief can- 
not be justified upon his system, it ought to 
be accounted for as a phsenomenon of hu- 
man nature. [352] 

This he has done, by giving us a new 
theory of belief in general ; a theory which 
suits very well with that of ideas, and seems 
to be a natural consequence of it, and which, 
at the same time, reconciles all the belief 
that we find in human nature to perfect 
scepticism. 

What, then, is this belief? It must 
either be an idea, or some modification of 
an idea ; we conceive many things which we 
do not believe. The idea of an object is 
the same whether we believe it to exist, or 
barely conceive it. The belief adds no new 
idea to the conception ; it is, therefore, no- 
thing but a modification of the idea of the 
thing believed, or a different manner of 
conceiving it. Hear himself : — 

" All the perceptions of the mind are of 
two kinds, impressions and ideas, which 
differ from each other only in their different 
degrees of force and vivacity. Our ideas 
are copied from our impressions, and repre- 
sent them in all their parts. When you 
would vary the idea of a particular object, 
you can only increase or diminish its force 
and vivacity. If you make any other change 
upon it, it represents a different object or 
impression. The case is the same as in 
colours. A particular shade of any colour 
may acquire a new degree of liveliness or 
brightness, without any other variation ; 
but, when you produce any other variation, 
it is no longer the same shade or colour. So 
that, as belief does nothing but vary the 
manner in which we conceive any object, it 
can only bestow en our ideas an additional 
force and vivacity. An opinion, therefore, 
or belief, may be most accurately defined a 
lively idea, related to or associated with a 
present impression.'' 

This theory of belief is very fruitful of 
consequences, which Mr Hume traces with 
his usual acuteness, and brings into the 
service of his system. [353] A great part 
of his system, indeed, is built upon it ; and 
it is of itself sufficient to prove what he 
calls his hypothesis, " that belief is more 
properly an act of the sensitive than of 
the cogitative part of our natures." 

It is very difficult to examine this ac- 
count of belief with the same gravity with 
which it is proposed. It puts one in 
mind of the ingenious account given by 
Martinus Scriblerus of the power of syllo- 
gism, by making the maj >>• the male, and 
the minor the female, which, being coupled 
by the middle term, generate the conclusion. 
There is surely no science in which men of 
great parts and ingenuity have fallen into 
[~3.5 1-3.53] 



chap, vii.] THEORIES CONCERNING MEMORY. 



359 



such gross absurdities as in treating of the 
powers of the mind. I cannot help think- 
ing that never anything more absurd was 
gravely maintained by any philosopher, 
than this account of the nature of belief, 
and of the distinction of perception, memory, 
and imagination. 

The belief of a proposition is an opera- 
tion of mind of which every man is con- 
scious, and what it is he understands per- 
fectly, though, on account of its simplicity, 
he cannot give a logical definition of it. If 
he compares it with strength or vivacity of 
his ideas, or with any modification of ideas, 
they are so far from appearing to be one 
and the same, that they have not the least 
similitude. 

That a strong belief and a weak belief 
differ only in degree, I can easily compre- 
hend ; but that belief and no belief should 
differ only in degree, no man can believe 
who understands what he speaks. For this 
is, in reality, to say that something and 
nothing differ only in degree ; or, that 
nothing is a degree of something. 

Every proposition that may be the ob- 
ject of belief, has a contrary proposition 
that may be the object of a contrary belief. 
The ideas of both, according to Mr Hume, 
are the same, and differ only in degrees of 
vivacity — that is, contraries differ only in 
degree ; and so pleasure may be a degree 
of pain, and hatred a degree of love. [354] 
But it is to no purpose to trace the absurd- 
ities that follow from this doctrine, for none 
of them can be more absurd than the doc- 
trine itself. 

Every man knows perfectly what it is to 
see an object with his eyes, what it is to 
remember a past event, and what it is to 
conceive a thing which has no existence. 
That these are quite different operations of 
his mind, he is as certain as that sound 
differs from colour, and both from taste ; 
and I can as easily believe that sound, and 
colour, and taste differ only in degree, as 
that seeing, and remembering, and imagin- 
ing, differ only in degree. 

Mr Hume, in the third volume of his 
" Treatise of Human Nature," is sensible 
that his theory of belief is liable to strong 
objections, and seems, in some measure, to 
retract it ; but in what measure, it is not 
easy to say. He seems still to think that 
belief is only a modification of the idea ; 
but that vivacity is not a proper term to 
express that modification. Instead of it, 
he uses some analogical phrases, to explain 
that modification, such as " apprehending 
the idea more strongly, or taking faster 
hold of it." 

There is nothing more meritorious in a 
philosopher than to retract an error upon 
conviction ; but, in this instance, I hum- 
bly apprehend Mr Hume claims that merit 
1354-3.561 



upon too slight a ground. For I cannot 
perceive that the apprehending an idea 
more strongly, or taking faster hold of it, 
expresses any other modification of the idea 
than what was before expressed by its 
strength and vivacity, or even that it ex- 
presses the same modification more pro- 
perly. Whatever modification of the idea 
he makes belief to be, whether its vivacity, 
or some other without a name, to make 
perception, memory, and imagination to be 
the different degrees of that modification, 
is chargeable with the absurdities we have 
mentioned. 

Before we leave this subject of memory, 
it is proper to take notice of a distinction 
which Aristotle makes between memory 
and reminiscence, because the distinction 
has a real foundation in nature, though in 
our language, I think, we do not distinguish 
them by different names. [355] 

Memory is a kind of habit which is not 
always in exercise with regard to things we 
remember, but is ready to suggest them 
when there is occasion. The most perfect 
degree of this habit is, when the thing pre- 
sents itself to our remembrance spontane- 
ously, and without labour, as often as there 
is occasion. A second degree is, when the 
thing is forgot for a longer or shorter time, 
even when there is occasion to remember 
it ; yet, at last, some incident brings it to 
mind without any search. A third degree 
is, when we cast about and search for what 
we would remember, and so at last find it 
out. It is this last, I think, which Ari- 
stotle calls reminiscence, as distinguished 
from memory. 

Reminiscence, therefore, includes a will 
to recollect something past, and a search for 
it. But here a difficulty occurs. It may 
be said, that what we will to remember we 
must conceive, as there can be no will with- 
out a conception of the thing willed. A 
will to remember a thing, therefore, seems 
to imply that we remember it already, and 
have no occasion to search for it. But this 
difficulty is easily removed. When we will 
to remember a thing, we must remember 
something relating to it, which gives us a 
relative conception of it ; but we may, at 
the same time, have no conception what the 
thing is, but only what relation it bears to 
something else. Thus, I remember that a 
friend charged me with a commission to be 
executed at such a place ; but I have forgot 
what the commission was. By applying 
my thought to what I remember concerning 
it, that it was given by such a person, upon 
such an occasion, in consequence of such a 
conversation, I am led, in a train of thought, 
to the very thing I had forgot, and recol- 
lect distinctly what the commission was. 
[356] 

Aristotle says, that brutes have not re- 



360 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay it- 



miniscence ;* and this I think is probable ; 
but, says he, they have memory. It cannot, 
indeed, be doubted but they have something 
very like to it, and, in some instances, in a 
very great degree. A dog knows his master 
after long absence. A. horse will trace back 
a road he has once gone, as accurately as a 
man ; and this is the more strange, that the 
train of thought which he had in going must 
be reversed in his return. It is very like 
to some prodigious memories we read of, 
where a person, upon hearing an hundred 
names or unconnected words pronounced, 
can begin at the last, and go backwards to 



the first, without losing or misplacing one. 
Brutes certainly may learn much from ex- 
perience, which seems to imply memory. 

Yet, I see no reason to think that brutes 
measure time as men do, by days, months, 
or years ; or that they have any distinct 
knowledge of the interval between things 
which they remember, or of their distance 
from the present moment If we could not 
record transactions according to their dates, 
human memory would be something very 
different from what it is, and, perhaps, re- 
semble more the memory of brutes. [357] 



ESSAY IV. 



OF CONCEPTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF CONCEPTION, OR SIMPLE APPREHENSION IN 
GENERAL. 

Conceiving, imagining,^ apprehending, un- 
derstanding, having a notion of a thing, are 
common words, used to express that opera- 
tion of the understanding which the logi- 
cians call simple apprehension. The having 
an idea of a thing, is, in common language, 
used in the same sense, chiefly, I think, 
since Mr Locke's time. X 

Logicians define Simple Apprehension to 
be the bare conception of a thing without 
any judgment or belief about it. If this 
were intended for a strictly logical definition, 
it might be a just objection to it, that con- 
ception and apprehension are only synony- 
mous words ; and that we may as well 
define conception by apprehension, as appre- 
hension by conception ; but it ought to be 



* This is a question which may be differently an. 
swered, according as we attribute a diflerent meaning 
to the terms employed H. 

t Imagining should not be confounded with Con- 
ceiving, &c. ; though some philosophers, as Ga-sendi, 
have not attended to the distinction. The words 
Conception, Concept, Notion, should be limited to the 
thought of what cannot be represented in the imagin- 
ation, as, the thought .sugges'ed by a general term. 
The Leibnitzians call this symbolical in contrast' to 
intuitive knowledge. This is the sense -m which 
conceptio-and conceptits have been usually and cor- 
rectly employed. Mr Siewarf, on the other hand, 
arbitrarily limiis Conception to the reproduction, in 
imagination, of an object of sense as actually per- 
ceived. See Elements, vol. I., ch. iii. I cannot 
enter on a general criticism of Reid's nomenclature, 
though I may say something more of this in the 
sequel. See below, under pp. 371, 482.— H. 

t In this country should be added. Locke only 
introduced into English philosophy the teim idea in 
its Cartesian universality. Prior to him, the word 
was only used with us in its Platonic signification. 
Before Des Cartes. David Buchanan, a Scotch philo- 
sopher, who sojourned in France, had, however, em- 
ployed Idea in an equal latitude. See Note G— H. 



remembered that the most simple operations 
of the mind cannot be logically defined. To 
have a distinct notion of them, we must 
attend to them as we feel them in our own 
minds. He that would have a distinct 
notion of a scarlet colour, will never attain 
it by a definition ; he must set it before his 
eye, attend to it, compare it with the colours 
that come nearest to it, and observe the 
specific difference, which he will in vain 
attempt to define.* [358] 

Every man is conscious that he can con- 
ceive a thousand things, of which he believes 
nothing at all — as a horse with wings, a 
mountain of gold ; but, although concep- 
tion may be without any degree of belief, 
even the smallest belief cannot be without 
conception. He that believes must have 
some conception of what he believes. 

Without attempting a definition of this 
operation of the mind, I shall endeavour to 
explain some of its properties ; consider the 
theories about it ; and take notice of some 
mistakes of philosophers concerning it. 

1. It may be observed that conception 
enters as an ingredient in every operation 
of the mind. Our senses cannot give us the 
belief of any object, without giving some 
conception of it at the same time. No man 
can either remember or reason about things 
of which he hath no conception. When 
we will to exert any of our active powers, 
there must be some conception of what we 
will to do. There can be no desire nor 
aversion, love nor hatred, without some con- 
ception of the object. We cannot feel pain 
without conceiving it, though we can con- 
ceive it without feeling it. These things 
are self-evident. 

In every operation of the mind, there- 






* We do not define the specific difference, but we 
define bv it.— K. 



[357, 358] 



chap, i.] OF SIMPLE APPREHENSION IN GENERAL. 



3(H 



fore, in everything we call thought, there 
must be conception. When we analyse the 
various operations either of the understand- 
ing or of the will, we shall always find this 
at the bottom, like the caput mortuum of 
the chemists, or the materia prima of the 
Peripatetics ; but, though there is no opera- 
tion of miud without conception, yet it may 
be found naked, detached from all others, 
and then it is called simple apprehension, or 
the bare conception of a thing. 

As all the operations of our mind are ex- 
pressed by language, every one knows that 
it is one thing to understand what is said, 
to conceive or apprehend its meaning, 
whether it be a word, a sentence, or a dis- 
course ; it is another thing to judge of it, 
to assent or dissent, to be persuaded or 
moved. The first is simple apprehension, 
and may be without the last ; but the last 
cannot be without the first. ^ [359] 

2. In bare conception there can neither 
be truth nor falsehood, because it neither 
affirms nor denies. Every judgment, and 
every proposition by which judgment is 
expressed, must be true or false ; and the 
qualities of true and false, in their proper 
sense, can belong to nothing but to judg- 
ments, or to propositions which express 
judgment. In the bare conception of a 
thing there is no judgment, opinion, or be- 
lief included, and therefore it cannot be 
either true or false. 

But it may be said, Is there anything 
more certain than that men may have true 
or false conceptions, true or false appre- 
hensions, of things ? I answer, that such 
ways of speaking are indeed so common, 
and so well authorized by custom, the arbiter 
of language, that it would be presumption 
to censure them. It is hardly possible to 
avoid using them. But we ought to be 
upon our guard that we be not misled by 
them, to confound things which, though 
often expressed by the same words, are 
really different. We must therefore re- 
member what was before observed, Essay I. 
chap. I — that all the words by which we 
signify the bare conception of a thing, are 
likewise used to signify our opinions, when 
we wish to express them with modesty and 
diffidence. And we shall always find, that, 
when we speak of true or false conceptions, 
we mean true or false opinions. An opinion, 
though ever so wavering, or ever so mo- 
destly expressed, must be either true or 
false ; but a bare conception, which ex- 
presses no opinion or judgment, can be 
neither. 

If we analyse those speeches in which 
men attribute truth or falsehood to our 
conceptions of things, we shall find in every 
case, that there is some opinion or judgment 
implied in what they call conception. [360] 
A child conceives the moon to be flat, and a 
[359-361] 



foot or two broad — that is, this is his opinion : 
and, when we say it is a false notion or a 
false conception, we mean that it is a false 
opinion. He conceives the city of London 
to be like his country village — that is, he 
believes it to be so, till he is better instructed. 
He conceives a lion to have horns ; that is, 
he believes that the animal which men call 
a lion, has horns. Such opinions language 
authorizes us to call conceptions ; and they 
may be true or false. But bare conception, 
or what the logicians call simple apprehen- 
sion, implies no opinion, however slight, 
and therefore can neither be true nor false. 

What Mr Locke says of ideas (by which 
word he very often means nothing but con- 
ceptions) is very just, when the word idea 
is so understood. Book II., chap, xxxii., § 1. 
" Though truth and falsehood belong in 
propriety of speech only to propositions, yet 
ideas are often termed true or false (as 
what words are there that are not used with 
great latitude, and with some deviation 
from their strict and proper signification ?) 
though I think that when ideas themselves 
are termed true or false, there is still some 
secret or tacit proposition, which is the 
foundation of that denomination : as we shall 
see, if we examine the particular occasions 
wherein they come to be called true or false ; 
in all which we shall find some kind of 
affirmation or negation, which is the reason 
of that denomination ; for our ideas, being 
nothing but bare appearances, or perceptions 
in our minds, cannot properly and simply 
in themselves be said to be true or false, no 
more than a simple name of anything can 
be said to be true or false." 

It may be here observed, by the way, that, 
in this passage, as in many others, Mr 
Locke uses the word perception, as well as 
the word idea, to signify what I call con- 
ception, or simple apprehension. And in 
his chapter upon perception, Book II., chap, 
ix., he uses it in the same sense. Percep- 
tion, he says, "as it is the first faculty of 
the mind, exercised about our ideas, so it 
is the first and simplest idea we have from 
reflection, and is by some called thinking 
in general. [361] It seems to be that 
which puts the distinction betwixt the ani- 
mal kingdom and the inferior parts of nature. 
It is the first operation of all our faculties, 
and the inlet of all knowledge into our 
minds." 

Mr Locke has followed the example given 
by Des Cartes, Gassendi, and other Carte- 
sians,* in giving the name of perception to 
the bare conception of things : and he has 
been followed in this by Bishop Berkeley, 



* GassendiWas not a Cartesian, but an Anti-Car 
tesian, though he adopted several points in his phi- 
losoDhy from Des Cartes — for example, the employ- 
ment of the term Idea not in its Platonic limitation. 



362 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



Qessay IV. 



Mr Hume, and many late philosopher?, 
when they treat of ideas. They have pro- 
bably been led into this impropriety, by the 
common doctrine concerning- ideas, which 
teaches us, that conception, perception by 
the senses, and memory, are only different 
ways of perceiving ideas in our own minds. * 
If that theory be well founded, it will in- 
deed be very difficult to find any specific 
distinction between conception;and percep- 
tion, -f- But there is reason to distrust any 
philosophical theory when it leads men to 
corrupt language, and to confound, under 
one name, operations of the mind which 
common sense and common language teach 
them to distinguish. 

I grant that there are some states of the 
mind, wherein a man may confound his 
conceptions with what he perceives or re- 
members, and mistake the one for the other ; 
as in the delirium of a fever, in some cases 
of lunacy and of madness, in dreaming, and 
perhaps in some momentary transports of 
devotion, or of other strong emotions, which 
cloud his intellectual faculties, and, for a 
time, carry a man out of himself, as we 
usually express it. 

Even in a sober and sound state of mind, 
the memory of a thing may be so very weak 
that we may be in doubt whether we only 
dreamed or imagined it. 

It may be doubted whether children, 
when their imagination first begins to work, 
can distinguish what they barely conceive 
from what they remember. [362] I have 
been told, by a man " of knowledge and ob- 
servation, that one of his sons, when he 
began to speak, very often told lies with 
great assurance, without any intention, as 
far as appeared, or any consciousness of 
guilt. From which the father concluded, 
that it is natural to some children to lie. 
I am rather inclined to think that the child 
had no intention to deceive, but mistook the 
rovings of his own fancy^for things which 
he remembered. £ This, however, I take 
to be very uncommon, after children can 
communicate their sentiments by language, 
though perhaps not so in a more early 
period. 

Granting all this, if any man will affirm 
that they whose intellectual faculties are 
sound, and sober, and ripe, cannot with 
certainty distinguish what they perceive or 
remember, from what they barely conceive, 
when those operations have any degree of 
strength and distinctness, he may enjoy his 

* But see above, p. 280, a, note * ct -alibi.— H. 

\ Yet Re id himself defines Perception, a Concep- 
tion (Imagination) accompanied with a belief in the 
existence of its -object ; and Mr Stewart reduces the 
specific difference, at best only a concomitant, to an 
accidental circumstance, in holding that our im- 
aginations are themselves conjoined with a tempo, 
rary bplief in their objective reality. — H. 
X But compeue alxve, y. 340, col. a.— H. 



opinion ; I know not how to reason with 
him. Why should philosophers confound 
those operations in treating of ideas, when 
they would be ashamed to do it on other 
occasions? To distinguish the various 
powers of our minds, a certain degree of 
understanding is necessary. And if" some, 
through a defect of understanding, natural 
or accidental, or from unripeness of under- 
standing, may be apt to confound different 
powers, will it follow that others cannot 
clearly distinguish them ? 

To return from this digression — into which 
the abuse ofthe word perception, by philo- 
sophers, has led me — it appears evident that 
the bare conception of an object, which 
includes no opinion or judgment, can neither 
be true nor false. Those qualities, in their 
proper sense, are altogether inapplicable to 
this operation of the mind. 

3. Of all the analogies between the opera- 
tions of body and those of the mind, there 
is none so strong and so obvious to all man- 
kind as that which there is between paint- 
ing, or other plastic arts, and the power of 
conceiving objects in the mind. Hence, in 
all languages, the words by which this power 
of the mind and its various modifications 
are expressed, are analogical, and borrowed 
from those arts. [363] We consider this 
power of the mind as a plastic power, by 
which we form to ourselves images of the 
objects of thought. 

In vain should we attempt to avoid this 
analogical language, for we have no other 
language upon the subject ; yet it is danger- 
ous, and apt to mislead. All analogical and 
figurative words have a double meaning ; 
and, if we are not very much upon our 
guard, we slide insensibly from the bor- 
rowed and figurative meaning into the pri- 
mitive. We are prone to carry the parallel 
between the things compared farther than it 
will hold, and thus very naturally to fall 
into error. 

To avoid this as far as possible in the pre- 
sent subject, it is proper to attend to the 
dissimilitude between conceiving a thing in 
the mind, and painting it to the eye, as well 
as to their similitude. The similitude strikes 
and gives pleasure. The dissimilitude we 
are less disposed to observe ; but the philo- 
sopher ought to attend to it, and to carry it 
always in mind, in his reasonings on this 
subject, as a monitor, to warn him against 
the errors into which the analogical lan- 
guage is apt to draw him. 

When a man paints, there is some work 
done, which remains when his hand is taken 
off, and continues to exist though he should 
think no more of it. Every stroke of his 
pencil produces an effect, and this effect is 
different from his action in making it ; for 
it remains and continues to exist when the 
action ceases. The action of painting is 
[ 362, 633~} 



•1 



OF SIMPLE APPREHENSION IN GENERAL. 



363 



one thing ; the picture produced is another 
thing. The first is the cause, the second is 
the effect. 

Let us next consider what is done when 
he only conceives this picture. He must 
have conceived it before he painted it ; for 
this is a maxim universally admitted, that 
every work of art must first be conceived in 
the mind of the operator. What is this 
conception ? It is an act of the mind, a kind 
of thought. This cannot be denied. [364] 
But does it produce any effect besides the 
act itself ? Surely common sense answers 
this question in the negative ; for every 
Dne knows that it is one thing to conceive, 
another thing to bring forth into effect. It 
is one thing to project, another to execute. 
A man may think for a long time what he 
is to do> and after all do nothing. Con- 
ceiving, as well as projecting or resolving, 
are what the schoolmen called immanent acts 
of the mind, which produce nothing beyond 
themselves. But painting is a transitive 
act, which produces an effect distinct from 
the operation, and this effect is the picture. 
Let this, therefore, be always remembered, 
that what is commonly called the image of 
a thing in the mind, is no more than the 
act or operation of the mind in conceiving 
it. 

That this is the common sense of men 
who are untutored by philosophy, appears 
from their language. If one ignorant of the 
language should ask, What is meant by 
conceiving a thing ? we should very natur- 
ally answer, that it is having an image of 
it in the mind — and perhaps we could not 
explain the word better. This shews that 
conception, and the image of a thing in the 
mind, are synonymous expressions. The 
image in the mind, therefore, is not the 
object of conception, nor is it any effect 
produced by conception as a cause. It is 
conception itself. That very mode of think- 
ing which we call conception, is by another 
name called an image in the mind.* 

Nothing more readily gives the concep- 
tion of a thing than the seeing an image of 
it. Hence, by a figure common in language, 
conception is called an image of the thing 
conceived. But to shew that it is not a 
real but a metaphorical image, it is called 
an image in the mind. We know nothing 
that is properly in the mind but thought ; 
and, when anything else is said to be in the 
mind, the expression must be figurative, 
and signify some kind of thought. [365] 
I know that philosophers very unani- 
mously maintain, that in conception there 



* We ought, however, to distinguish Imagination 
and Image, Conception and Concept. Imagination 
and Conception ought to be employed in speaking of 
the mental modification, one' and indivisible, con. 
sidered as an act ; Image and Concept, in speaking 
of it, considered as a product or immediate object.— 

f364.-366l 



is a real image in the mind, which is the 
immediate object of conception, and distinct 
from the act of conceiving it. I beg the 
reader's indulgence to defer what may be 
said for or against this philosophical opinion 
to the next chapter ; intending in this only 
to explain what appears to me to belong to 
this operation of mind, without considering 
the theories about it. I think it appears, 
from what has been said, that the common 
language of those who have not imbibed any 
philosophical opinion upon this subject, 
authorizes us to understand the conception 
of a thing, and an image of it in the mind, 
not as two different things, but as two dif- 
ferent expressions, to signify one and the 
same thing ; and I wish to use common 
words in their common acceptation. 

4. Taking along with us what is said in 
the last article, to guard us against the se- 
duction of the analogical language used on 
this subject, we may observe a very strong 
analogy, not only between conceiving and 
painting in general, but between the dif- 
ferent kinds of our conception?, and the 
different works of the painter. He either 
makes fancy pictures, or he copies from the 
painting of others, or he paints from the 
life ; that is, from real objects of art or 
nature which he has seen. I think our 
conceptions admit of a division very similar. 

First, There are conceptions which may 
be called fancy pictures. They are com- 
monly called creatures of fancy, or of im- 
agination. They are not the copies of any 
original that exists, but are originals them- 
selves. Such was the conception which 
Swift formed of the island of Laputa, and 
of the country of the Lilliputians ; Cer- 
vantes of Don Quixote and. his Squire ; 
Harrington of the Government of Oceana ; 
and Sir Thomas More of that of Utopia. 
We can give names to such creatures of 
imagination, conceive them distinctly, and 
reason consequentially concerning them, 
though they never had an existence. They 
were conceived by their creators, and may 
be conceived by others, but they never 
existed. We do not ascribe the qualities 
of true or false to them, because they are 
not accompanied with any belief, nor do they 
imply any affirmation or negation. [366] 

Setting aside those creatures of imagina- 
tion, there are other conceptions, which 
may be called copies, because they have an 
original or archetype to which they refer, 
and with which they are believed to agree ; 
and we call them true or false conceptions, 
according as they agree or disagree with 
the standard to which they are referred. 
These are of two kinds, which have different 
standards or originals. 

The first kind is analogous to pictures 
taken from the life. We have conceptions 
of individual things that really exist, such 



3fJ4 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[_ES.?AY JV 



as the city of London, or the government 
of Venice. Here the things conceived are 
the originals ; and our conceptions are called 
true when they agree with the thing con- 
ceived. Thus, my conception of the city of 
London is true, when I conceive it to be 
what it really is. 

Individual things which really exist, 
being the creatures of God, (though some 
of them may receive their outward form 
from man,) he only who made them knows 
their whole nature ; we know them but in 
part, and therefore our conceptions of them 
must in all cases be imperfect and inade- 
quate ; yet they may be true and just, as 
far as they reach. 

The second kind is analogous to the copies 
which the painter makes from pictures done 
before. Such I think are the conceptions 
we have of what the ancients called univer- 
sal ; that is, of things which belong or may 
belong to many individuals. These are 
kinds and species of things ; such as man 
or elephant, which are species of substances ; 
wisdom or courage, which are species of 
qualities ; equality or similitude, which are 
species of relations.* It may be asked — 
From what original are these conceptions 
formed ? And when are they said to be 
true or false ? [367] 

It appears to me, that the original from 
which they are copied — that is, the thing 
conceived — is the conception or meaning 
which other men, who understand the 
language, affix to the same words. 

Things are parcelled into kinds and sorts, 
not by nature, but by men. The individual 
things we are connected with, are so many, 
that to give a proper name to every indi- 
vidual would be impossible. We could 
never attain the knowledge of them that is 
necessary, nor converse and reason about 
them, without sorting them according to 
their different attributes. Those that agree 
in certain attributes are thrown into one 
parcel, and have a general name given 
them, which belongs equally to every indi- 
vidual in that parcel. This common name 
must therefore signify those attributes 
which have been observed to be common 
to every individual in that parcel, and no- 
thing else. 

That such general words may answer 
their intention, all that is necessary is, that 
those who use them should affix the same 
meaning or notion— that is, the same con- 
ception to them. The common meaning is 
the standard by which such conceptions are 
formed, and they are said to be true or 



* Of all su:h we can have no adequate imagination. 
A universal, when represented in imagination, is no 
longer adequate, no longer a universal. We. cannot 
have an image of Horse, but only of some individual 
of that species We may, however, have a notion or 
conception of it. See below, p. 48 >.—H. 



false according as they agree or disagree 
with it. Thus, my conception of felony is 
true and just, when it agrees with the 
meaning of that word in the laws relating 
to it, and in authors who understand the 
law. The meaning of the word is the 
thing conceived ; and that meaning is the 
conception affixed to it by those who best 
understand the language. 

An individual is expressed in language 
either by a proper name, or by a general 
word joined to such circumstances as dis- 
tinguish that individual from all others ; if 
it is unknown, it may, when an object of 
sense, and within reach, be pointed out to 
the senses ; when beyond the reach of the 
senses, it may be ascertained by a descrip- 
tion, which, though very imperfect, may be 
true, and sufficient to distinguish it from 
every other individual. Hence it is, that, 
in speaking of individuals, we are very little 
iu danger of mistaking the object, or tak- 
ing one individual for another. [368] 

Yet, as was before observed, our concep- 
tion of them is always inadequate and lame. 
They are the creatures of God, and there 
are many things belonging to them which 
we know not, and which cannot be deduced 
by reasoning from what we know. They 
have a real essence, or constitution of 
nature, from which all their qualities flow ; 
but this essence our faculties do not com- 
prehend. They are therefore incapable of 
definition ; for a definition ought to com- 
prehend the whole nature or essence of the 
thing denned. 

Thus, Westminster Bridge is an indi- 
vidual object; though I had never seen 
or heard of it before, if I am only made 
to conceive that it is a bridge from West- 
minster over the Thames, this concep- 
tion, however imperfect, is true, and is 
sufficient to make me distinguish it, when 
it is mentioned, from every other object 
that exists. The architect may have an 
adequate conception of its structure, which 
is the work of man ; but of the materials, 
which are the work of God, no man has an 
adequate conception ; and, therefore, though 
the object may be described, it cannot bo 
denned. 

Universals are always expressed by gene- 
ral words ; and all the words of language, 
excepting proper names, are general words ; 
they are the signs of general concep- 
tions, or of some circumstance relating 
to them. These general conceptions are 
formed for the purpose of language and 
reasoning ; and the object from which they 
are taken, and to which they are intended 
to agree, is the conception which other men 
join to the same words ; they may, there- 
fore, be adequate, and perfectly agree with 
the thing conceived. This implies no more 
than that men who speak the same language 
[367, 368J 



chap, i.] OF SIMPLE APPREHENSION IN GENERAL. 



365 



may perfectly agree in the meaning of 
many general words. 

Thus mathematicians have conceived 
what they call a plane triangle. They 
have defined it accurately ; and, when I 
conceive it to be a plane surface, bounded 
by three right lines, I have both a true and 
an adequate conception of it. [369] There 
is nothing belonging to a plane triangle 
which is not comprehended in this conception 
of it, or deducible from it by just reasoning. 
This definition expresses the whole essence 
of the thing defined, as every just definition 
ought to do ; but this essence is only what 
Mr Locke very properly calls a nominal 
essence ; it is a general conception formed 
by the mind, and joined to a general word 
as its sign. 

If all the general words of a language had 
a precise meaning, and were perfectly un- 
derstood, as mathematical terms are, all 
verbal disputes would be at an end, and 
men would never seem to differ in opinion, 
but when they differ in reality ; but this is 
far from being the case. The meaning of 
most general words is not learned, like that 
of mathematical terms, by an accurate 
definition, but by the experience we happen 
to have, by hearing them used in conversa- 
tion. From such experience, we collect 
their meaning by a kind of induction ; and, 
as this induction is, for the most part, lame 
and imperfect, it happens that different per- 
sons join different conceptions to the same 
general word ; and, though we intend to 
give them the meaning which use, the 
arbiter of language, has put upon them, 
this is difficult to find, and apt to be mis- 
taken, even by the candid and attentive. 
Hence, in innumerable disputes, men do not 
really differ in their judgments, but in the 
way of expressing them. 

Our conceptions, therefore, appear to be 
of 'hree kinds. They are either the concep- 
tions of individual things, the creatures of 
God ; or they are conceptions of the mean- 
ing of general words ; or they are the crea- 
tures of our own imagination : and these 
different kinds have different properties, 
which we have endeavoured to describe. 

5 . O ur conception of things may be strong 
and lively, or it may be faint and languid in 
all degrees. These are qualities which pro- 
perly belong to our conceptions, though we 
have no names for them but such as are 
analogical. • Every man is conscious of such 
a difference in his conceptions, and finds his 
lively conceptions most agreeable, when the 
object is not of such a nature as to give 
pain. 1370] 

Those who have lively conceptions, com- 
monly express them in a lively manner — 
that is, in such a manner as to raise lively 
conceptions and emotions in others Such 
persons are the most agreeable companions 
[369-371 J 



in conversation, and the most acceptable in 
their writings. 

The liveliness of our conceptions proceeds 
from different causes- Some objects, from 
their own nature, or from accidental asso- 
ciations, are apt to raise strong emotions in 
the mind. Joy and hope, ambition, zeal, 
and resentment, tend to enliven our con- 
ceptions ; disappointment, disgrace, grief, 
and envy, tend rather to flatten them. Men 
of keen passions are commonly lively and 
agreeable in conversation ; and dispassion- 
ate men often make dull companions. There 
is in some men a natural strengthaand vigour 
of mind which gives strength to their con- 
ceptions on all subjects, and in all the occa- 
sional variations of temper. 

It seems easier to form a lively concep- 
tion of objects that are familiar, than of 
those that are not ; our conceptions of visible 
objects are commonly the most lively, when 
other circumstances are equal. Hence, 
poets not only delight in the description of 
visible objects, but find means, by meta- 
phor, analogy, and allusion, to clothe every 
object they describe with visible qualities. 
The lively conception of these makes the 
object appeal', as it were, before our eyes. 
Lord Kames, in his Elements of Criticism, 
has shewn of what importance it is in 
works of taste, to give to objects described, 
what he calls ideal presence.* To produce 
this in the mind, is, indeed, the capital aim 
of poetical and rhetorical description. It 
carries the man, as it were, out of himself, 
and makes him a spectator of the scene 
described. This ideal presence seems to me, 
to be nothing else but a lively conception of 
the appearance which the object would make 
if really present to the eye. [371] 

Abstract and general conceptions are 
never lively, though they may be distinct ; 
and, therefore, however necessary in philo- 
sophy, seldom enter into poetical descrip- 
tion without being particularised or clothed 
in some visible dress, -f- 

It may be observed, however, that our 
conceptions of visible objects become more 
lively by giving them motion, and more 
still by giving them life and intellectual 
qualities. Hence, in poetry, the whole crea- 
tion is animated, and endowed with sense 
and reflection. 

Imagination, when it is distinguished 
from conception, seems to me to signify 
one species of conception —to wit, the COn- 



EIlaXoTOhct, Visiones, of the ancient Rhetoricians.— 
H. 

t They thus cease to be aught abstract and general, 
and become merely individual representations. In 
precise language, they are no longer i>ovnu.otrx, but 
<p«vTa<r,u,<KT<* ; no \onger Begriffe, but Anschauungen ; 
no longer notions or concepts, but images. The worl 
" particularised" ought to have been individualised 



366 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IV. 



ception of visible objects.* Thus, in a 
mathematical proposition, I imagine the 
figure, and I conceive the demonstration ; 
it would not, I think, be improper to say, 
I conceive both ; but it would not be so 
proper to say, I imagine the demonstration. 

6- Our conceptions of things maybe clear, 
distinct, and steady ; or they may be ob- 
scure, indistinct, and wavering. The live- 
liness of our conceptions gives pleasure, 
but it is their distinctness and steadiness 
that enables us to judge right, and to 
express our sentiments with perspicuity. 

If we inquire into the cause, why, among 
persons speaking or writing on the same 
subject, we find in one so much darkness, 
in another so much perspicuity, I believe 
the chief cause will be found to be, that 
one had a distinct and steady concep- 
tion of what he said and wrote, and the 
other had not. Men generally find means 
to express distinctly what they have con- 
ceived distinctly. Horace observes, that 
proper words spontaneously follow distinct 
conceptions — " Verbaque provisam rem. non 
invito, sequuntur." But it is impossible 
that a man should distinctly express what 
he has not distinctly conceived. [372] 

We are commonly taught that perspicuity 
depends upon a proper choice of words, a 
proper structure of sentences, and a proper 
order in the whole composition. All this 
is very true ; but it supposes distinctness in 
our conceptions, without which there can 
be neither propriety in our words, nor in 
the structure of our sentences, nor in our 
method. 

Nay, 1 apprehend that indistinct con- 
ceptions of things are, for the most part, 
the cause, not only of obscurity in writing 
and speaking, but of error in judging. 

Must not they who conceive things in the 
same manner form the same judgment of 
their agreements and disagreements ? Is 
it possible for two persons to differ with 
regard to the conclusion of a syllogism who 
have the same conception of the premises ? 

Some persons find it difficult to enter 
into a mathematical demonstration. I be- 
lieve we shall always find the reason to be, 
that they do not distinctly apprehend it. 
A man cannot be convinced by what he 
does not understand. On the other hand, 
I think a man cannot understand a de- 
monstration without seeing the force of it. 
I speak of such demonstrations as those 
of Euclid, where every step is set down, and 
nothing left to be supplied by the reader. 

* It is to be regretted that Reid did not more fully 
develope the distinction of Imagination and Concep- 
tion, on which he here and elsewhere inadequately 
touches. Imagination is not, though in conformity 
to the etymology of the term, to be limited to the 
representation of visible objects. See below, under 
p. 482. Neither ought the term conceive to be used 
in the extensive sense of understand. — H. 



Sometimes one who has got through the 
first four books of Euclid's " Elements," 
and sees the force of the demonstrations, 
finds difficulty in the fifth. What is the 
reason of this ? You may find, by a little 
conversation with him, that he has not a 
clear and steady conception of ratios, and 
of the terms relating to them. When the 
terms used in the fifth book have become 
familiar, and readily excite in his mind a 
clear and steady conception of their mean- 
ing, you may venture to affirm that he will 
be able to understand the demonstrations 
of that book, and to see the force of them. 
[373] 

If this be really the case, as it seems to 
be, it leads us to think that men are very 
much upon a level with regard to mere 
judgment, when we take that faculty apart 
from the apprehension or conception of the 
things about which we judge; so that a 
sound judgment seems to be the inseparable 
companion of a clear and steady apprehen- 
sion. And we ought not to consider these 
two as talents, of which the one may fall to 
the lot of one man, and the other to the lot 
of another, but as talents which always go 
together. 

It may, however, be observed, that some 
of our conceptions may be more subservient 
to reasoning than others which are equally 
clear and distinct. It was before observed, 
that some of our conceptions are of indi- 
vidual things, others of things general and 
abstract. It may happen that a man who 
has very clear conceptions of things in- 
dividually, is not so happy in those of 
things general and abstract. And this I 
take to be the reason why we find men 
who have good judgment in matters of 
common life, and perhaps good talents for 
poetical or rhetorical composition, who find 
it very difficult to enter into abstract reas- 
oning. 

That I may not appear singular in put- 
ting men so much upon a level in point of 
mere judgment, I beg leave to support this 
opinion by the authority of two very think 
ing men, Des Cartes and Cicero. The 
former, in his dissertation on Method, ex- 
presses himself to this purpose : — " Nothing 
is so equally distributed among men as 
judgment. • Wherefore, it seems reasonable 
to believe, that the power of distinguishing 
what is true from what is false, (which we 
properly call judgment or right reason,) is 
by nature equal in all men ; and therefore 
that the diversity of our opinions does not 
arise from one person being endowed with 
a greater power of reason than another, but 
only from this, that we do not lead our 



* *' Judgment," bona mens, in the authentic 
Latin translation. I cannot, at the moment, lay 
hands on my copy of the French original ; but, if I 
recollect aright, it is there le bon sens. — H. 

[372,373] 



chap, i.] OF SIMPLE APPREHENSION IN GENERAL. 



3(J7 



thought in the same track, nor attend to 
the same things." 

Cicero, in his third book " De Oratore," 
makes this observation — " It is wonderful 
when the learned and unlearned differ so 
much in art, how little they differ in judg- 
ment. For art being derived from Nature, 
is good for nothing, unless it move and 
delight Nature." [374] 

From what has been said in this article, 
it follows, that it is so far in our power to 
write and speak perspicuously, and to reason 
justly, as it is in our power to form clear 
and distinct conceptions of the subject on 
which we speak or reason. And, though 
Nature hath put a wide difference between 
one man and another in this respect, yet 
that it is in a very considerable degree in 
our power to have clear and distinct appre- 
hensions of things about which we think 
and reason, cannot be doubted. 

7. It has been observed by many authors, 
that, when we barely conceive any object, 
the ingredients of that conception must 
either be things with which we were before 
acquainted by some other original power of 
the mind, or they must be parts or attri- 
butes of such things. Thus, a man cannot 
conceive colours if he never saw, nor sounds 
if he never heard. If a man had not a con- 
science, he could not conceive what is meant 
by moral obligation, or by right and wrong 
in conduct. 

Fancy may combine things that never 
were combined in reality. It may enlarge 
or diminish, multiply or divide, compound 
and fashion the objects which nature pre- 
sents ; but it cannot, by the utmost effort 
of that creative power which we ascribe to 
it, bring any one simple ingredient into its 
productions which Nature has not framed 
and brought to our knowledge by some 
other faculty. 

This Mr Locke has expressed as beauti- 
fully as justly. The dominion of man, in 
this little world of his own understanding, 
is much the same as in the great world of 
visible things ; wherein his power, however 
managed by art and skill, reaches no farther 
than to compound and divide the materials 
that are made to his hand, but can do no- 
thing towards making the least particle of 
matter, or destroying one atom that is 
already in being. [375] The same inability 
will every one find in himself, to fashion in his 
understanding any simple idea not received 
by the powers which God has given him. 

I think all philosophers agree in this senti- 
ment. Mr Hume, indeed, after acknow- 
ledging the truth of the principle in general, 
mentions what he thinks a single exception 
to it — That a man, who had seen all the 
shades of a particular colour except one, 
might frame in his mind a conception of 
that shade which he never saw. I think 
[374-376] 



this is not an exception ; because a parti- 
cular shade of a colour differs not specifically, 
but only in degree, from other shades of the 
same colour. 

It is proper to observe, that our most 
simple conceptions are not those which 
nature immediately presents to us. When 
we come to years of understanding, we have 
the power of analysing the objects of nature, 
of distinguishing their several attributes 
and relations, of conceiving them one by 
one, and of giving a name to each, whose 
meaning extends only to that single attri- 
bute or relation : and thus our most simple 
conceptions are not those of any object in 
nature, but of some single attribute or rela- 
tion of such objects. 

Thus, nature presents to our senses 
bodies that are extended in three dimensions, 
and solid. By analysing the notion we have 
of body from our senses, we form to our- 
selves the conceptions of extension, solidity, 
space, a point, a line, a surface — all which 
are more simple conceptions than that of a 
body. But they are the elements, as it 
were, of which our conception of a body is 
made up, and into which it may be analysed. 
This power of analysing objects we propose 
to consider particularly in another place. 
It is only mentioned here, that what is said 
in this article may not be understood so as 
to be inconsistent with it. [376] 

8. Though our conceptions must be con- 
fined to the ingredients mentioned in the 
last article, we are unconfined with regard 
to the arrangement of those ingredients. 
Here we may pick and choose, and form 
an endless variety of combinations and com- 
positions, which we call creatures of the 
imagination. These may be clearly con- 
ceived, though they never existed : and, 
indeed, everything that is made, must have 
been conceived before it was made. Every 
work of human art, and every plan of con- 
duct, whether in public or in private life, 
must have been conceived before it was 
brought to execution. And we cannot avoid 
thinking, that the Almighty, before he 
created the universe by his power, had a 
distinct conception of the whole and of every 
part, and saw it to be good, and agreeable 
to his intention. 

It is the business of man, as a rational 
creature, to employ this unlimited power of 
conception, for planning his conduct and 
enlarging his knowledge. It seems to be 
peculiar to beings endowed with reason to 
act by a preconceived plan. Brute animals 
seem either to want this power, or to have 
it in a very low degree. They are moved 
by instinct, habit, appetite, or natural affec- 
tion, according as these principles are stirred 
by the present occasion. But I see no 
reason to think that they can propose to 
themselves a connected plan of life, or form 



368 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IV. 



general rules of conduct Indeed, we see 
that many of the human species, to whom 
God has given this power, make little use 
of it. They act without a plan, as the pas- 
sion or appetite which is strongest at the 
time leads them. 

9. The last property I shall mention of 
this faculty, is that which essentially dis- 
tinguishes it from every other power of the 
mind ; and it is, that it is not employed 
solely about things which have existence. 
I can conceive a winged horse or a centaur, 
as easily and as distinctly as I can conceive 
a man whom I have seen. Nor does this 
distinct conception incline my judgment in 
the least to the belief that a winged horse 
or a centaur ever existed. [377] 

It is not so with the other operations of 
our minds. They are employed about real 
existences, and carry with them the belief 
of their objects. When I feel pain, I am 
compelled to believe that the pain that I 
feel has a real existence. When I perceive 
any external object, my belief of the real 
existence of the object is irresistible. When 
I distinctly remember any event, though 
that event may not now exist, I can have 
no doubt but it did exist. That conscious- 
ness which we have of the operations of 
our own minds, implies a belief of the real 
existence of those operations. 

Thus we see, that the powers of sensa- 
tion, of perception, of memory, and of con- 
sciousness, are all employed solely about 
objects that do exist, or have existed. But 
conception is often employed about objects 
that neither do, nor did, nor will exist. This 
is the very nature of this faculty, that its 
object, though distinctly conceived, may 
have no existence. Such an object we call 
a creature of imagination ; but this creature 
never was created. 

That we may not impose upon ourselves 
in this matter, we must distinguish between 
that act or operation of the mind, which we 
call conceiving an object, and the object 
which we conceive. When we conceive 
anything, there is a real act or operation of 
the mind. Of this we are conscious, and 
can have no doubt of its existence. But 
every such act must have an object ;* for he 
that conceives must conceive something. 
Suppose he conceives a centaur, he may 
have a distinct conception of this object, 
though no centaur ever existed. 

I am afraid that, to those who are unac- 
quainted with the doctrine of philosophers 
upon this subject, I shall appear in a very 
ridiculous light, for insisting upon a point 
so very evident as that men may barely 
conceive things that never existed. They 
will hardly believe that any man in his wits 
ever doubted of it. Indeed, I know no 

* See below, p. 390, and Note E.— H. 



truth more evident to the common sense and 
to the experience of mankind. But, if the 
authority of philosophy, ancient and modern, 
opposes it, as I think it does, I wish not 
to treat that authority so fastidiously as not 
to attend patiently to what may be said in 
support of it. [378] 



CHAPTER II. 

THEORIES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 

The theory of ideas has been- applied to 
the conception of objects, as well as to per- 
ception and memory. Perhaps it will be 
irksome to the reader, as it is to the writer, 
to return to that subject, after so much has 
been said upon it ; but its application to the 
conception of objects, which could not pro- 
perly have been introduced before, gives a 
more comprehensive view of it, and of the 
prejudices which have led philosophers so 
unanimously into it. 

There are two prejudices which seem to 
me to have given rise to the theory of ideas 
in all the various forms in which it has ap- 
peared in the course of above two thousand 
years ; and, though they have no support 
from the natural dictates of our faculties, 
or from attentive reflection upon their oper- 
ations, they are prejudices which those who 
speculate upon this subject are very apt to 
be led into by analogy. 

The first is — That, in all the operations of 
the understanding, there must be some im- 
mediate intercourse between the mind and 
its object, so that the one may act upon the 
other. The second, That, in all the opera- 
tions of understanding, there must be an 
object of thought, which really exists while 
we think of it ; or, as some philosophers 
have expressed it, that which is not cannot 
be intelligible. 

Had philosophers perceived that these are 
prejudices grounded only upon analogical 
reasoning, we had never heard of ideas in 
the philosophical sense of that word. [379] 

The first of these principles has led philo- 
sophers to think that, as the external 
objects of sense are too remote to act upon 
the mind immediately, there must be some 
image or shadow of them that is present to 
the mind, and is the immediate object of 
perception. That there is such an imme- 
diate object of perception, distinct from 
the external object, has been very unani- 
mously held by philosophers, though they 
have differed much about the name, the 



* The reader will bear in mind what has been 
already said of the limi'ed meaning attached by 
Reid to the term Idea, viz., something in, or present 
to the mind, but not a mere modification of the 
mind — and his error in supposing that all philosophers 
admitted this crude hypothesis. See Notes B, C, L t 
M, N, O, P, &c— H. 



[377-379"] 



chap, ii.] THEORIES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 



309 



nature, and the origin of those immediate 
objects. 

We have considered what has been said in 
the support of this principle, Essay II. chap. 
14, to which the reader is referred, to 
prevent repetition. 

I shall only add to what is there said, 
That there appears no shadow of reason 
why the mind must have an object imme- 
diately present to it in its intellectual oper- 
ations, any more than in its affections and 
passions. Philosophers have not said that 
ideas are the immediate objects of love or 
resentment, of esteem or disapprobation. 
It is, I think, acknowledged, that persons 
and not ideas, are the immediate objects of 
those affections ; persons, who are as far 
from being immediately present to the mind 
as other external objects, and, sometimes, 
persons who have now no existence, in this 
world at least, and who can neither act 
upon the mind, nor be acted upon by it. 

The second principle, which I conceive 
to be likewise a prejudice of philosophers, 
grounded upon analogy, is now to be 
considered. 

It contradicts directly what was laid down 
in the last article of the preceding chapter 
— to wit, that we may have a distinct con- 
ception of things which never existed. This 
is undoubtedly the common belief of those 
who have not been instructed in philosophy ; 
and they will think it as ridiculous to defend 
it by reasoning, as to oppose it. [380] 

The philosopher says, Though there 
may be a remote object which does not ex- 
ist, there mast be an immediate object 
which really exists ; for that which is not, 
cannot be an object of thought. The idea 
must be perceived by the mind, and, if it 
does not exist there, there can be no per- 
ception of it, no operation of the mind 
about it. - 

This principle deserves the more to be 
examined, because the other before men- 
tioned depends upon it ; for, although the 
last may be true, even if the first was false, 
yet, if the last be not true, neither can the 
first. If we can conceive objects which 
have no existence, it follows that there may 
be objects of thought which neither act upon 
the mind, nor are acted upon by it ; because 
that which has no existence can neither act 
nor be acted upon. 

It is by these principles that philosophers 
have been led to think that, in every act of 
memory and of conception, as well as of 
perception, there are two objects — the 
one, the immediate object, the idea, the 
species, the form ; the other, the mediate 
or external object. The vulgar know onlj 



* In relation to this and what follows, see above, 
p. 292, b, note t ; p. 278, a, note f j and Note B. 



H. 

[380,3811 



of one object, which, in perception, is some- 
thing external that exists ; in memory, 
something that did exist ; and, in concep- 
tion, may be something that never existed.* 
But the immediate object of the philo- 
sophers, the idea, is said to exist, and to be 
perceived in all these operations. 

These principles have not only led philo- 
sophers to split objects into two, where 
others can find but one, but likewise have 
led them to reduce the three operations now 
mentioned to one, making memory and con- 
ception, as well as perception, to be the per- 
ception of ideas. But nothing appears more 
evident to the vulgar, than that what is 
only remembered, or only conceived, is not 
perceived ; and, to speak of the perceptions 
of memory, appears to them as absurd as 
to speak of the hearing of sight. [381] 

In a word, these two principles carry us 
into the whole philosophical theory of ideas, 
and furnish every argument that ever was 
used for their existence. If they are true, 
that system must be admitted with all its 
consequences. If they are only prejudices, 
grounded upon analogical reasoning, the 
whole system must fall to the ground with 
them. 

It is, therefore, of importance to trace 
those principles, as far as we are able, to 
their origin, and to see, rf possible, whether 
they have any just foundation in reason, or 
whether they are rash conclusions, drawn 
from a supposed analogy between matter 
and mind. 

The unlearned, who are guided by the 
dictates of nature, and express what they 
are conscious of concerning the operations 
of their own mind, believe that the object 
which they distinctly perceive certainly 
exists ; that the object which they distinctly 
remember certainly did exist, but now may 
not ; but as to things that are barely con- 
ceived, they know that they can conceive a 
thousand things that never existed, and that 
the bare conception of a thing does not so 
much as afford a presumption of its exist- 
ence. They give themselves no trouble to 
know how these operations are performed, or 
to account for them from general principles. 

But philosophers, who wish to discover 
the causes of things, and to account for 
these operations of mind, observing that in 
other operations there must be not only an 
agent, but something to act upon, have 
been led by analogy to conclude that it 
must be so in the operations of the mind. 

The relation between the mind and its 
conceptions bears a very strong and obvious 
analogy to the relation between a man and 
his work. Every scheme he forms, every 
discovery he makes by his reasoning powers, 
is very properly called the work of his mind. 
These works of the mind are somet imes 
* See references in preceding note.— H. 
SB 



370 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IV. 



great and important works, and draw the 
attention and admiration of men. [382] 

It is the province of the philosopher to 
consider how such works of the mind are 
produced, and of what materials they are 
composed. He calls the materials ideas. 
There must therefore be ideas, which the 
mind can arrange and form. into a regular 
structure. Everything that is produced, 
must be produced of something ; and from 
nothing, nothing can be produced. 

Some such reasoning as this seems to me 
to have given the first rise to the philoso- 
phical notions of ideas. Those notions were 
formed into a system by the Pythagoreans, 
two thousand years ago ; and this system 
was adopted by Plato, and embellished with 
all the powers of a fine and lofty imagina- 
tion. I shall, in compliance with custom, 
call it the Platonic system of ideas, though 
in reality it was the invention of the Pytha- 
gorean school.* 

The most arduous question which em- 
ployed the wits of men in the infancy of 
the Grecian philosophy was— What was the 
origin of the world ? — from what principles 
and causes did it proceed ? To this ques- 
tion very different answers were given in 
the different schools. Most of them appear 
to us very ridiculous. The Pythagoreans, 
however, judged, very rationally, from the 
order and beauty of the universe, that it 
must be the workmanship of an eternal, in- 
telligent, and good being : and therefore 
they concluded the Deity to be one first 
principle or cause of the universe. 

But they conceived there must be more. 
The universe must be made of something. 
Every workman must have materials to 
work upon. That the world should be made 
out of nothing seemed to them absurd, be- 
cause everything that is made must be made 
of something. 

Nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus unquam.— Lucr. 
De nibilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti. — Pens. 

This maxim never was brought into doubt : 
even in Cicero's time it continued to be 
held by all philosophers. [383] What 
natural philosopher (says that author in his 
second book of Divination) ever asserted 
that anything could take its rise from 
nothing, or be reduced to nothing ? Be- 
cause men must have materials to work 
upon, they concluded it must be so with 
the Deity. This was reasoning from analogy. 
From this it followed, that an eternal 
uncreated matter was another first prin- 
ciple of the universe. But this matter they 
believed had no form nor quality. It was 



* Ideas in the Platonic, and Ideas in the modern 
signification, hold, as I hare already shewn, little 
or no analogy to each other. See above, p. 204, a, 
notes + ± j p. 225, b, note * j p. 262, b. note *.— H. 



the same with the materia prima or first 
matter of Aristotle, who borrowed this part 
of his philosophy from his predecessors. 

To us it seems more rational to think 
that the Deity created matter with its qua- 
lities, than that the matter of the universe 
should be eternal and self-existent. But 
so strong was the prejudice of the ancient 
philosophers against what we call creation, 
that they rather chose to have recourse to 
this eternal and unintelligible matter, that 
the Deity might have materials to work 
upon. 

The same analogy which led them to 
think that there must be an eternal matter of 
which the world was made, led them also 
to conclude that there must be an eternal 
pattern or model according to which it was 
made. Works of design and art must be 
distinctly conceived before they are made. 
The Deity, as an intelligent Being, about 
to execute a work of perfect beauty and 
regularity, must have had a distinct con- 
ception of his work before it was made. 
This appears very rational. 

But this conception, being the work of 
the Divine intellect, something must have 
existed as its object. This could only be 
ideas, which are the proper and immediate 
object of intellect. [384] 

From this investigation of the principles 
or causes of the universe, those philoso- 
phers concluded them to be three in number 
— to wit, an eternal matter as the material 
cause, eternal ideas as the model or exem- 
plary cause, and an eternal intelligent mind 
as the efficient cause. 

As to the nature of those eternal ideas, 
the philosophers of that sect ascribed to 
them the most magnificent attributes. 
They were immutable and uncreated ;* the 
object of the Divine intellect before the 
world was made ; and the only object of 
intellect and of science to all intelligent 
beings. As far as intellect is superior to 
sense, so far are ideas superior to all the 
objects of sense. The objects of sense 
being in a constant flux, cannot properly 
be said to exist. Ideas are the things 
which have a real and permanent exist- 
ence. They are as various as the species of 
things, there being one idea of every spe- 
cies, but none of individuals. The idea is 
the essence of the species, and existed be- 
fore any of the species was made. It is 
entire in every individual of the species, 
without being either divided or multiplied. 

In our present state, we have but an 
imperfect conception of the eternal ideas ; 
but it is the highest felicity and perfection 
of men to be able to contemplate them- 

* Whether, in the Platonic system, Ideas are, or 
are not, independent of the Deity, I have already 
stated, is, and always has been, a vexata qucestio.— 
H. 

[382-38 1] 



chap, ii.j THEORIES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 



371 



While we are in this prison of the body, 
sense, as a dead weight, bears us down 
from the contemplation of the intellectual 
objects ; and it is only by a due purifica- 
tion of the soul, and abstraction from sense, 
that the intellectual eye is opened, and that 
we are enabled to mount upon the wings of 
intellect to the celestial world of ideas. 

Such was the most ancient system con- 
cerning ideas, of which we have any account. 
And, however different from the modern, 
it appears to be built upon the prejudices 
we have mentioned — to wit, that in every 
operation there must be something to work 
upon ; and that even in conception there 
must be an object which really exists. 
[385J 

For, if those ancient philosophers had 
thought it possible that the Deity could 
operate without materials in the formation 
of the world, and that he could conceive 
the plan of it without a model, they could 
have seen no reason to make matter and 
ideas eternal and necessarily existent prin- 
ciples, as well as the Deity himself. 

Whether they believed that the ideas 
were not only eternal, but eternally, and 
without a cause, arranged in that Leautiful 
and perfect order which they ascribe to this 
intelligible world of ideas, I cannot say ; 
but this seems to be a necessary conse- 
quence of the system : for, if the Deity 
could not conceive the plan of the world 
which he made, without a model which 
really existed, that model could not be his 
work, nor contrived by his wisdom ; for, if 
he made it, he must have conceived it 
before it was made ; it must therefore have 
existed in all its beauty and order inde- 
pendent of the Deity ; and this I think 
they acknowledged, by making the model 
and the matter of this world, first princi- 
ples, no less than the Deity. 

If the Platonic system be thus understood, 
(and I do not see how it can hang together 
otherwise,) it leads to two consequences 
that are unfavourable to it. 

First, Nothing is left to the Maker of 
this world but the skill to work after a 
model. The model had all the perfection 
and beauty that appears in the copy, and 
the Deity had only to copy after a pattern 
that existed independent of him. Indeed, 
the copy, if we believe those philosophers, 
falls very far short of the original ; but this 
they seem to have ascribed to the refracto- 
riness of matter of which it was made. 

Secondly, If the world of ideas, without 
being the work of a perfectly wise and good 
intelligent being, could have so much beauty 
and perfection, how can we infer from the 
beauty and order of this world, which is 
but an imperfect copy of the other, that it 
must have been made by a perfectly wise 
and good being ? {386] The force of this 
[385-387 ] 



reasoning, from the beauty and order of the 
universe, to its being the work of a wise 
being, which appears invincible to every 
candid mind, and appeared so to those 
ancient philosophers, is entirely destroyed 
by the supposition of the existence of a 
world of ideas, of greater perfection and 
beauty, which never was made. Or, if the 
reasoning be good, it will apply to the world 
of ideas, which must, of consequence, have 
been made by a wise and good intelligent 
being, and must have been conceived before 
it was made. 

It may farther be observed, that all that 
is mysterious and unintelligible in the Pla- 
tonic ideas, arises from attributing existence 
to them. Take away this one attribute, all 
the rest, however pompously expressed, 
are easily admitted and understood. 

What is a Platonic idea ? It is the 
essence of a species. It is the exemplar, the 
model, according to which all the individuals 
of that species are made. It is entire in 
every individual of the species, without be- 
ing multiplied or divided. It was an object 
of the divine intellect from eternity, and is an 
object of contemplation and of science to 
every intelligent being. It is eternal, im- 
mutable, and uncreated ; and, to crown all, 
it not only exists, but has a more real and 
permanent existence than anything that 
ever God made. 

Take this description a 1 together, and it 
would require an CEdipus to unriddle it. 
But take away the last part of it, and no- 
thing is more easy. It is easy to find five 
hundred things which answer to every 
article in the description except the last. 

Take, for an instance, the nature of a 
circle, as it is defined by Euclid — an object 
which every intelligent being may conceive 
distinctly, though no circle had ever existed ; 
it is the exemplar, the model, according to 
which all the individual figures of that 
species that ever existed were made ; for 
they are all made according to the nature of a 
circle. [387] It is entire in every individual 
of the species, without being multiplied or 
divided. For every circle is an entire 
circle ; and all circles, in as far as they are 
circles, have one and the same nature. It 
was an object of the divine intellect from 
all eternity, and may be an object of con- 
templation and of science to every intelli- 
gent being. It is the essence of a species, 
and, like all other essences, it is eternal, 
immutable, and uncreated. This means 
no more but that a circle always was a 
circle, and can never be anything but a 
circle. It is the necessity of the thing, 
and not any act of creating power, that 
makes a circle to be a circle. 

The nature of every species, whether of 
substance, of quality, or of relation, and in 
general everything which the ancients called 

2b a 



372 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IV. 



an universal, answers to the description of 
a Platonic idea, if in that description you 
leave out the attribute of existence. 

If we believe that no species of things 
could be conceived by the Almighty with- 
out a model that really existed, we must go 
back to the Platonic system, however mys- 
terious. But, if it be true that the Deity 
could have a distinct conception of things 
which did not exist, and that other intelligent 
beings may conceive objects which do not 
exist, the system has no better foundation 
than this prejudice, that the operations of 
mind must be like those of the body. 

Aristotle rejected the ideas of his master 
Plato as visionary; but he retained the 
prejudices that gave rise to them, and there- 
fore substituted something in their place, 
but under a different name,* and of a dif- 
ferent origin. 

He called the objects of intellect, intelli- 
gible species ; those of the memory and 
imagination, phantasms ; and those of the 
senses, sensible species. This change of the 
name* was indeed very small ; for the Greek 
word of Aristotle [eT^o?] which we translate 
species or form, is so near to the Greek 
word idea, both in its sound and significa- 
tion, that, from their etymology, it would 
not be easy to give them different meanings. 
[388] Both are derivedfrom the Greek word 
which signifies to see, and both may signify a 
vision or appearance to the eye. Cicero, who 
understood Greek well, often translates the 
Greek word idea by the Latin word visio. 
But both words being used as terms of art — 
one in the Platonic system, the other in the 
Peripatetic — the Latin writers generally 
borrowed the Greek word idea to express the 
Platonic notion, and translated Aristotle's 
word, by the words species or forma ; and in 
this they have been followed in the modern 
languages. * 

Those forms or species were called intelli- 
gible, to distinguish them from sensible 
species, which Aristotle held to be the imme- 
diate objects of sense. 

He thought that the sensible species come 
from the external object, and denned a sense 
to be that which has the capacity to receive 
the form of sensible things without the mat- 
ter ; as wax receives the form of a seal with- 
out any of the matter of it In like manner, 
he thought that the intellect receives the 
forms of things intelligible ; and he callsit 
the place of forms. 



* Reid seems not aware that Plato, and Aristotle 
in relation to Plato, employed the terms iTbo; and 
\~hitA almost as convertible. In fact, the latter usually 
combats the ideal theory of the former by the name 
oiuhos — e. g., ret, t'i'hi) j;*i{:'va, rieiTio-fJ.ot.ra. y«£ \s~i. 
M. Cousin, in a learned and ingenious paper of his 
" Nouveaux Fragments," has endeavoured to shew 
that ^lato did not apply the two terms indifferently; 
end the same has been attempted by Richter. But 
60 many exceptions must be admitted, that, appa- 
rently, no determinate rule can be established.— H. 



I take it to have been the opinion of Aris- 
totle, that the intelligible forms in the hu- 
man intellect are derived from the sensible 
by abstraction, and other operations of the 
mind itself. As to the intelligible forms in 
the divine intellect, they must have had 
another origin ; but I do not remember that 
he gives any opinion about them. He cer- 
tainly maintained, however, that there is no 
intellection without intelligible species ;* 
no memory or imagination without phan- 
tasms ; no perception without sensible 
species. Treating of memory, he proposes , 
a difficulty, and endeavours to resolve it — 
how a phantasm, that is a present object in 
the mind, should represent a thing that is 
past. [389] 

Thus, I think, it appears that the Per- 
ipatetic system of species and phantasms, 
as well as the Platonic system of ideas, is 
grounded upon this principle, that in every 
kind of thought there must be some object 
that really exists ; in every operation of the 
mind, something to work upon. "Whether 
this immediate object be called an idea with 
Plato,-f* or a phantasm or species with Aris- 
totle — whether it be eternal and uncreated, 
or produced by the impressions of external 
objects — is of no consequence in the pre- 
sent argument. In both systems, it was 
thought impossible that the Deity could 
make the world without matter to w r ork 
upon ; in both, it was thought impossible 
that an intelligent Being could conceive 
anything that did not exist, but by means 
of a model that really existed. 

The philosophers of the Alexandrian 
school, commonly called the latter Plato- 
nists, conceived the eternal ideas of things 
to be in the Divine intellect, and thereby 
avoided the absurdity of making them a 
principle distinct from and independent of 
the Deity ; but still they held them to exist 
really in the Divine mind as the objects of 
conception, and as the patterns and arche- 
types of things that are made. 

Modern philosophers, still persuaded that 
of every thought there must be an imme- 
diate object that really exists, have not 
deemed it necessary to distinguish by dif- 
ferent names the immediate objects of in- 
tellect, of imagination, and of the senses, 
but have given the common name of idea 
to them all. 

Whether these ideas be in the sensorium, 
or in the mind, or partly in the one and 
partly in the other; whether they exist 
when they are not perceived, or only when 

* There is ,even less reason to attribute such a 
theory to Aristotle in relation to the intellect than 
in relation to sense and imagination. See even his 
oldest commentator, the Aphrodisian, TLiefWvxvs * 
f. 139, a. In fact, the greater number of those Peri- 
patetics who admitted species in this crude form for 
the latter, rejected them for the former. — H. 

t See above, p. 26?, b, note *. — H. 

[388, 3391 



chap, ii.] THEORIES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 



373 



they are perceived ; whether they are the 
workmanship of the Deity or of the mind 
itself, or of external natural causes — with 
regard to these points, different authors 
seem to have different opinions, and the 
same author sometimes to waver or be 
diffident ; but as to their existence, there 
seems to be great unanimity.* [390] 

So much is this opinion fixed in the 
minds of philosophers, that I doubt not but 
it will appear to most a very strange para- 
dox, or rather a contradiction, that men 
should think without ideas. 

That it has the appearance of a contra- 
diction, I confess. But this appearance 
arises from the ambiguity of the word idea. 
If the idea of a thing means only the thought 
of it, or the operation of the mind in think- 
ing about it, which is the most common 
meaning of the word, to think without ideas, 
is to think without thought, which is un- 
doubtedly a contradiction. 

But an idea, according to the definition 
given of it by philosophers, is not thought, 
but an object of thought, which really exists 
and is perceived. Now, whether is it a 
contradictiou to say, that a man may think 
of an object that does not exist ? 

I acknowledge that a man cannot per- 
ceive an object that does not exist ; nor can 
he remember an object that did not exist ; 
but there appears to me no contradiction in 
his conceiving an object that neither does 
nor ever did exist. 

Let us take an example. I conceive a 
centaur. This conception is an operation 
of the mind, of which I am conscious, and 
to which I can attend. The sole object of it 
is a centaur, an animal which, I believe, 
never existed. I can see no contradiction 
in this.-j- 

The philosopher says, I cannot conceive 
a centaur without having an idea of it in 
my mind. I am at a loss to understand 
what he means. He surely does not mean 
that I cannot conceive it without conceiving 
it. This would make me no wiser. What 
then is this idea ? Is it an animal, half 
horse and half man ? No. Then I am 
certain it is not the thing I conceive. Per- 
haps he will say, that the idea is an image 
of the animal, and is the immediate object 
of my conception, and that the animal is 
the mediate or remote object.^ [391] 

To this I answer — Fir.^t, I am certain 
there are not two objects of this conception, 
but one only ; and that one is as immediate 
an object of my conception as any can be. 

Secondly ', This one object which I con- 
ceive, is not the image of an animal — it is 



* This, as already once and again stated, is not 
correct. — H. 

t See above, p. 29?, b, note \, and Note B.— H. 

£ On this, and the subsequent reasoning in the 
present chapter, see Note 13.— H. 



I 390-392] 



an animal. I know what it is to conceive 
an image of an animal, and what it is to 
conceive an animal ; and I can distinguish 
the one of these from the other without 
any danger of mistake. The thing I con- 
ceive is a body of a certain figure and 
colour, having life and spontaneous motion. 
The philosopher says, that the idea is an 
image of the animal ; but that it has neither 
body, nor colour, nor life, nor spontaneous 
motion. This I am not able to comprehend. 

Thirdly, I wish to know how this idea 
comes to be an object of my thought, when 
I cannot even conceive what it means; 
and, if I did conceive it, this would be no 
evidence of its existence, any more than 
my conception of a centaur is of its exist- 
ence. Philosophers sometimes say that we 
perceive ideas, sometimes that we are con- 
scious of them. I can have no doubt of 
the existence of anything which I either 
perceive or of which I am conscious ;• but 
I cannot find that I either perceive ideas 
or am conscious of them. 

Perception and consciousness are very 
different operations, and it is strange that 
philosophers have never determined by 
which of them ideas are discerned. -f- This 
is as if a man should positively affirm that 
he perceived an object ; but whether by his 
eyes, or his ears, or his touch, he could not 
say. 

But may not a man who conceives a 
centaur say, that he has a distinct image of 
it in his mind ? I think he may. And if he 
means by this way of speaking what the 
vulgar mean, who never heard of the phi- 
losophical theory of ideas, I find no fault 
with it. [392] By a distinct image in the 
mind, the vulgar mean a distinct concep- 
tion ; and it is natural to call it so, on 
account of the analogy between an image of 
a thing and the conception of it. On ac- 
count of this analogy, obvious to all man- 
kind, this operation is called imagination, 
and an image in the mind is only a peri- 
phrasis for imagination. But to infer from 
this that there is really an image in the 
mind, distinct from the operation of con- 
ceiving the object, is to be misled by an 
analogical expression ; as if, from the 
phrases of deliberating and balancing things 
in the mind, we should infer that there is 
really a balance existing in the mind for 
weighing motives and arguments. 

The analogical words and phrases used 
in all languages to express conception, do, 
no doubt, facilitate their being taken in a 
literal sense. But, if we only attend care- 

* This is not the case, unless it be admitted that 
we are conscious of what we perceive — in oiher words, 
immediately cognitive of the non-ego. — H. 

\ But the philosophers did not, like Reid, make 
Consciousness one special faculty, and Perception 
another ; nor did they and Reid.mean by Terception 
the same thing.— H. 



374 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



Lessay IV. 



fully to what we are conscious of in this 
operation, we shall find no more reason to 
think that images do really exist in our 
minds, than that balances and other me- 
chanical engines do. 

We know of nothing that is in the mind 
but by consciousness, and we are conscious 
of nothing but various modes of thinking ; 
such as understanding, willing, affection, 
passion, doing, suffering. If philosophers 
choose to give the name of an idea to any 
mode of thinking of which we are conscious, 
I have no objection to the name, but that 
it introduces a foreign word into our lan- 
guage without necessity, and a word that is 
very ambiguous, and apt to mislead. But, 
if they give that name to images in the 
mind, which are not thought, but only 
objects of thought, I can see no reason to 
think that there are such things in nature. 
If they be, their existence and their nature 
must be more evident than anything else, 
because we know nothing but by their 
means. I may add, that, if they be, we 
can know nothing besides them. For, from 
the existence of images, we can never, by 
any just reasoning, infer the existence of 
anything else, unless perhaps the existence 
of an intelligent Author of them. In this, 
Bishop Berkeley reasoned right. [393] 

In every work of design, the work must 
be conceived before it is executed — that is, 
before it exists. If a model, consisting of 
ideas, must exist in the mind, as the ob- 
ject of this conception, that model is a work 
of design no less than the other, of which 
it is the model ; and therefore, as a work of 
design, it must have been conceived before 
it existed. In every work of design, there- 
fore, the conception must go before the 
existence. This argument we applied be- 
fore to the Platonic system of eternal and 
immutable ideas, and it may be applied with 
equal force to all the systems of ideas. 

If now it should be asked, What is the 
idea of a circle ? I answer, It is the con- 
ception of a circle. What is the immediate 
object of this conception ? The immediate 
and the only object of it is a circle. But 
where is this circle ? It is nowhere. If 
it was an individual, and had a real ex- 
istence, it must have a place ; but, being an 
universal, it has no existence, and therefore 
no place. Is it not in the mind of him that 
conceives it ? The conception of it is in 
the mind, being an act of the mind ; and in 
common language, a thing being in the 
mind, is a figurative expression, signify- 
ing that the thing is conceived or remem- 
bered. 

It may be asked, Whether this concep- 
tion is an image or resemblance of a circle ? 
I answer, I have already accounted for its 
being, in a figurative sense, called the image 
of a circle in the mind. If the question is 



meant in the literal sense, we must observe, 
that the word conception has two meanings. 
Properly it signifies that operation of the 
mind which we have been endeavouring to 
explain; but sometimes it is put for the 
object of conception, or thing conceived. 

Now, if the question be understood in the 
last of these senses, the object of this con- 
ception is not an image or resemblance of 
a circle ; for it is a circle, and nothing can 
be an image of itself. [394] 

If the question be — Whether the opera- 
tion of mind in conceiving a circle be an 
image or resemblance of a circle ? I think 
it is not ; and that no two things can be 
more perfectly unlike, than a species of 
thought and a species of figure. Nor is it 
more strange that conception should have 
no resemblance to the object conceived, 
than that desire should have no resem- 
blance to the object desired, or resentment 
to the object of resentment. 

I can likewise conceive an individual 
object that really exists, such as St Paul's 
Church in London. I have an idea of it ; 
that is, I conceive it. The immediate 
object of this conception is four hundred 
miles distant ; and I have no reason to think 
that it acts upon me, or that I act upon it ; 
but I can think of it notwithstanding. I 
can think of the first year or the last year 
of the Julian period. 

If, after all, it should be thought that 
images in the mind serve to account for this 
faculty of conceiving things most distant in 
time and place, and even things which do 
not exist, which otherwise would be alto- 
gether inconceivable ; to this I answer, 
that accounts of tilings, grounded upon 
conjecture, have been the bane of true 
philosophy in all ages. Experience may 
satisfy us that it is an hundred times more 
probable that they are false than that they 
are true. 

This account of the faculty of conception, 
by images in the mind or in the brain, 
will deserve the regard of those who have 
a true taste in philosophy, when it is proved 
by solid arguments — First, That there are 
images in the- mind, or in the brain, of the 
things we conceive. Secondly, That there 
is a faculty in the mind of perceiving such 
images. Thirdly, That the perception of 
such images produces the conception of 
things most distant, and even of things that 
have no existence. And, fourthly, That 
the perception of individual images in the 
mind, or in the brain, gives us the concep- 
tion of universals, which are the attributes 
of many individuals. [395] Until this is 
done, the theory of images existing in the 
mind or in the brain, ought to be placed in 
the same category with the sensible species, 
materia prima of Aristotle, and the vortices 
of Des Cartes. 

[393-3951 



cuap. in.] MISTAKES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 



3Jb 



CHAPTER III. 

MISTAKES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 

1. Writers on logic, after the example 
of Aristotle, divide the operations of the 
understanding into three : Simple Appre- 
hension, (which is another word for Con- 
ception,) Judgment, and Reasoning. They 
teach us, that reasoning is expressed hy a 
syllogism, judgment by a proposition, and 
simple apprehension by a term only — that 
is, by one or more words which do not 
make a full proposition, but only the sub- 
ject or predicate of a proposition. If, by 
this they mean, as I think they do, that a 
proposition, or even a syllogism, may not 
be simply apprehended, - I believe this is a 
mistake. 

In all judgment and in all reasoning, 
conception is included. We can neither 
judge of a proposition, nor reason about it, 
unless we conceive or apprehend it. We 
may distinctly conceive a proposition, with- 
out judging of it at all. We may have no 
evidence on one side or the other ; we may 
have no concern whether it be true or false. 
In these cases we commonly form no judg- 
ment about it, though we perfectly under- 
stand its meaning, -f- 

A man may discourse, or plead, or write, 
for other ends than to find the truth. His 
learning, and wit, and invention may be 
employed, while his judgment is not at all, 
or very little. When it is not truth, but 
some other end he pursues, judgment would 
be an impediment, unless for discovering 
the means of attaining his end ; and, there- 
fore, it is laid aside, or employed solely for 
that purpose. [396] 

The business of an orator is said to be, 
to find out what is fit to persuade. This a 
man may do with much ingenuity, who 
never took the trouble to examine whether 
it ought to persuade or not. Let it not be 
thought, therefore, that a man judges of 
the truth of every proposition he utters, or 
hears uttered. In our commerce with the 
world, judgment is not the talent that bears 
the greatest price ; and, therefore, those who 
are not sincere lovers of truth, lay up this 
talent where it rusts and corrupts, while 
they carry others to market, for which 
there is greater demand. 

2. The division commonly made by logi- 

* Does Reid .here mean, by apprehending simply, 
apprehending in one simple and indivisible act ?— H. 

t There is no conception poss ; ble without a judg- 
ment affirming its (ideal) existence. There is no 
consciousness, in fact, possible without judgment. 
See above, p. 243, a, note *. It is to be observed, 
that Reid uses conception in the course Of this chap- 
ter as convertible with understanding or comprehen- 
sion ; and, therefore, as we shall see, in a vaguer or 
rrr re extensive meaning than the philosophers whose 
opinion he controverts.— H. 

[.?»'!, 397] 



cians, of simple apprehension, into Sensation, 
Imagination, and Pure Intellection, seems 
to me very improper in several respects. 

First, Under the word sensation, they 
include not only what is properly so called, 
but the perception of external objects by 
the senses. These are very different opera- 
tions of the mind ; and, although they are 
commonly conjoined by nature, ought to be 
carefully distinguished by philosophers. 

Secondly, Neither sensation nor the percep- 
tion of external objects, is simple apprehen- 
sion. Both include j udgment and belief, which 
are excluded from simple apprehension.* 

Thirdly, They distinguish imagination 
from pure intellection by this, that, iu 
imagination, the image is in the brain ;-f- in 
pure intellection, it is in the intellect. This 
is to ground a distinction upon an hypo- 
thesis. We have no evidence that there 
are images either in the brain or in the in- 
tellect. [397] 

I take imagination, in its most proper 
sense, to signify a lively conception of 
objects of sight. % This is a talent of im- 
portance to poets and orators, and deserves 
a proper name, on account of its connection 
with those arts. According to this strict 
meaning of the word, imagination is dis- 
tinguished from conception as a part from 
the whole. We conceive the objects of the 
other senses, but it is not so proper to say 
that we imagine them. We conceive judg- 
ment, reasoning, propositions, and argu- 
ments ; but it is rather improper to say 
that we imagine these things. 

This distinction between imagination and 
conception, may be illustrated by an ex- 
ample, which Des Cartes uses to illus- 
trate the distinction betAveen imagination 
and pure intellection. We can imagine a 
triangle or a square so clearly as to 
distinguish them from every other figure. 
But we cannot imagine a figure of a thou- 
sand equal sides and angles so clearly. The 
best eye, by looking at it, could not distin- 
guish it from every figure of more or fewer 
sides. And that conception of its appear- 
ance to the eye, which we properly call im- 
agination, cannot be more distinct than the 
appearance itself; yet we can conceive a 
figure of a thousand sides, and even can 
demonstrate the properties which distinguish 
it from all figures of more or fewer sides. 
It is not by the eye, but by a superior fa- 
culty, that we form the notion of a great 



* See the last note.— H." 

t But not the image, of which the mind :s con- 
scious. By image or idea in the brain, species im- 
presses,, Sfc, was meant only the unknown corporeal 
antecedent of- the known mental consequent, -the 
image or idea in the mind, the species expressa, fyc. 
Reid here refers principally to the Cartesian doctrine. 
— H. 

X See above, p. 3f>G, a, note * : and, below, unde. 
p. 48.-.- H. 



3?6 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[[essay IV. 



number, such as a thousand. And a distinct 
notion of this number of sides not being to 
be got by the eye, it is not imagined, but 
it is distinctly conceived, and easily distin- 
guished from every other number. * 

3. Simple apprehension is commonly re- 
presented as the first operation of the 
understanding ; and judgment, as being a 
composition or combination of simple appre- 
hensions. 

This mistake has probably arisen from the 
taking sensation, and the perception of 
objects by the senses, to be nothing but 
simple apprehension. They are, very pro- 
bably, the first operations of the mind ; but 
they are not simple apprehensions. *f- [398] 

It is generally allowed, that we cannot 
conceive sounds if we have never heard, 
nor colours if we have never seen ; and the 
same thing may be said of the objects of 
the other senses. In like manner, we must 
have judged or reasoned before we have 
the conception or simple apprehension of 
judgment and of reasoning. 

Simple apprehension, therefore, though 
it be the simplest, is not the first operation 
of the understanding ; and, instead of say- 
ing that the more complex operations of 
the mind are formed by compounding sim- 
ple apprehensions, we ought rather to say, 
that simple apprehensions are got by ana- 
lysing more complex operations. 

A similar mistake, which is carried 
through the whole of Mr Locke's Essay, 
may be here mentioned. It is, that our 
simplest ideas or conceptions are got im- 
mediately by the senses, or by conscious- 
ness, and the complex afterwards formed 
by compounding them. I apprehend it is 
far otherwise. 

Nature presents no object to the senses, 
or to consciousness, that is not complex. 
Thus, by our senses we perceive bodies of 
various kinds ; but every body* is a com- 
plex object ; it has length, breadth, and 
thickness; it has figure, and colour, and 
various other sensible qualities, which are 
blended together in the same subject ; and 
I apprehend that brute animals, who have 
the same senses that we have, cannot sepa- 
rate the different qualities belonging to the 
same subject, and have only a complex 
and confused notion of the whole. Such 
also would be our notions of the objects of 
sense, if we had not superior powers of 
understanding, by which we can analyse 
the complex object, abstract every parti- 
cular attribute from the rest, and form a 
distinct conception of it. 

So that it is not by the senses imme- 

* See above, p. 366, a, note *.— H. 

t They are not simple apprehensions, in one sense 
—that is, the objects are not incoraposite. Hut this 
vas not the meaning in which the expression was used 
by the Logicians.— H. 



diately, but rather by the powers of ana- 
lysing and abstraction, that we get the most 
simple and the most distinct notions even 
of the objects of sense. This will be more 
fully explained in another place. [399] 

4- There remains another mistake con- 
cerning conception, which deserves to be 
noticed. It is — That our conception of 
things is a test of their possibility, so that, 
what we can distinctly conceive, we may 
conclude to be possible ; and of what is im- 
possible, we can have no conception. 

This opinion has been held by philoso- 
phers for more than an hundred years, 
without contradiction or dissent, as far as I 
know ; and, if it be an error, it may be of 
some use to inquire into its origin, and the 
causes that it has been so generally re- 
ceived as a maxim whose truth could not 
be brought into doubt. 

One of the fruitless questions agitated 
among the scholastic philosophers in the 
dark ages' was — What is the criterion of 
truth ? as if men could have any other way 
to distinguish truth from error, but by the 
right use of that power of judging which 
God has given them. 

Des Cartes endeavoured to put an end to 
this controversy, by making it a fundamen- 
tal principle in his system, that whatever 
we clearly and distinctly perceive, is true."}* 

To understand this principle of Des 
Cartes, it must be observed, that he gave 
the name of perception to every power of 
the human understanding ; and in explain- 
ing this very maxim, he tells us that sense, 
imagination, and pure intellection, are only 
different modes of perceiving, and, so the 
maxim was understood by all his followers. £ 

The learned Dr Cudworth seems also to 
have adopted this principle : — " The cri- 
terion of true knowledge, says he, is only 
to be looked for in our knowledge and con- 
ceptions themselves : for the entity of all 
theoretical truth is nothing else but clear 
intelligibility, and whatever is clearly con- 
ceived is an entity and a truth ; but that 
which is false, divine power itself cannot 
make it to be clearly and distinctly under- 
stood. [400] A falsehood can never be 
clearly conceived or apprehended to be 
true." — " Eternal and Immutable Mora- 
lity," p. 172, &c. 

This Cartesian maxim seems to me to 
have led the way to that now under con- 
sideration, which seems to have been adopted 
as the proper correction of the former. 
When the authority of Des Cartes declined, 
men began to see i that we may clearly and 
distinctly conceive what is not true, but 



* This was more a question with the Greek philo. 
sophers than witn the schoolmen.— H. 

t In this he proposed nothing new. -H. 

± That is, in Des Cartes' signification of the word, 

different modes of 'jeing conscioKS. See above. — H. 

[398-100] 



cuai». in.] MISTAKES CONCERNING CONCEPTION. 



377 



thought, that our conception, though not in 
all cases a test of truth, might be a test of 
possibility.* 

This indeed seems to be a necessary con- 
sequence of the received doctrine of ideas ; 
it being evident that there can be no dis- 
tinct image, either in the mind or anywhere 
else, of that which is impossible. -|- The 
ambiguity of the word conceive, which we 
observed, Essay I. chap. 1, and the com- 
mon phraseology of saying we cannot con- 
ceive such a thing, when we would signify 
that we think it impossible, might likewise 
contribute to the reception of this doctrine. 

But, whatever was the origin of this 
opinion, it seems to prevail universally, 
and to be received as a maxim. 

" The bare having an idea of the propo- 
sition proves the thing not to be impossible ; 
for of an impossible proposition there can 
be no idea." — Dr Samuel Clarke. 

" Of that which neither does nor can 
exist we can have no idea." — Lord Boling- 
broke. 

" The measure of impossibility to us is 
inconceivableness, that of which we can 
have no idea, but that reflecting upon it, it 
appears to be nothing, we pronounce to be 
impossible." — Abernethy. [401] 

" In every idea is implied the possibility 
of the existence of its object, nothing being 
clearer than that there can be no idea of 
an impossibility, or conception of what can- 
not exist." — Dr Price. 

" Impossible est cujus nullani notionem 
formare possumus ; possibile e contra, cui 
aliqua respondet notio." — Wolfii Ontolo- 

" It is an established maxim in metaphy- 
sics, that whatever the mind conceives, in- 
cludes the idea of possible existence, or, in 
other words, that nothing we imagine is 
absolutely impossible." — D. Hume. 

It were easy to muster up many other 
respectable authorities for this maxim, and 
I have never found one that called it in 
question. 

If the maxim be true in the extent which 

* That is, of logical possibility — the absence of con- 
tradiction.— H. 

* This is rather a strained inference. — H. 

? These are not exactly Wolf's expressions. See 
" Ontolopia," § § 102, 103; " Philosophia Rationalis" 
\ § 522, 528. The same doctrine is held by Tschirn. 
hansen and others. In so far, however, as it is said 
that inconceivability is the criterion of impossibility, 
it is- manifestly erroneous. Of many contradictories, 
we are able to conceive neither; but, by the law of 
thought, called that of Excluded Middle, one of two 
contradictories must be admitted— must be true. 
For example, we can neither conceive, on the one 
hand, an ultimate minimum of space or of time; nor 
can we, on the other, conceive their infinite divisibi- 
lity. In like manner, we cannot conceive the abso- 
lute commencement of time, or the utmost limit of 
space, And are yet equally unable to conceive them 
without any commencement or limit. The absurdity 
that would result from the assertion, that all that is 
inconceivable is impossible, is thus obvious ; and so 

far Reid's criticism is jusi, though not new H. 

[10 i, 1-02] 



the famous Wolfius has given it in the pas- 
sage above quoted, we shall have a short 
road to the determination of every question 
about the possibility or impossibility of 
things. We need only look into our own 
breast, and that, like the Urim and 
Thummim, will give an infallible answer. 
If we can conceive the thing, it is possible ; 
if not, it is impossible. And, surely, every 
man may know whether he can conceive 
what is affirmed or not. 

Other philosophers have been, satisfied 
with one half of the maxim of Wolfius. 
They say, that whatever we can conceive is 
possible ; but they do not say that whatever 
we cannot conceive is impossible. 

I cannot help thinking even this to be a 
mistake, which philosophers have been un- 
warily led into, from the causes before men- 
tioned. My reasons are these : — [402] 

1. Whatever is said to be possible or ira-r 
possible, is expressed by a proposition. 
Now, what is it to conceive a proposition ? 
I think it is no more than to understand 
distinctly its meaning.* I know no more 



* In this sense of the word Conception, I make 
bold to say that there is no philosopher who ever 
held an opinion different from that of our author. 
The whole dispute arises from Reid giving a wider 
signification to this term than that which it has 
generally received. In his view, it has two mean- 
ings ; in that of the philosophers whom he attacks, 
it has only one. To illustrate this, take the proposi- 
tion — a circle is square. Here we easily understand 
the meaning of the affirmation, because what is neces- 
sary to an act of judgment is merely that the subject 
and predicate should be brought into a unity of rela- 
tion. A judgment is therefore possible, even where 
the two terms are contradictory. But the philosophers 
never expressed, by the term conception, this under, 
standing of the purport of a proposition. What they 
meant by conception was not the unity of relation, 
but the unity of representation ; and this unity of 
representation they made the criterion of logical pos- 
sibility. To take the example already given : they 
did not say a circle may possibly be square, because 
we can understand the meaning of the proposition, 
a circle is square ; but, on the contrary, they said it 
is impossible that a circle can be square, and the pro- 
position affirming this is necessarily false, because we 
cannot, in consciousness, bring to a unity of repre- 
sentation the repugnant notions, circle and square- 
that is, conceive- the notion of square circle. Reid's 
mistake in this matter is so palpable that it is not 
more surprising that he should have committed it, 
than that so many should not only have followed him 
in the opinion, but even have lauded it as the refuta- 
tion of an important error. To shew how com- 
pletely Reid mistook the philosophers, it will be suf- 
ficient to quote a passage from Wolf's vernacular 
Logic, which I take from the English translation, 
(one, by the by, of the few tolerable versions we have 
of German philosophical works,) published in 1770: — 

" It is carefully to be observed, that we have not 
always the notion of the thing present to us, or in 
view, when we speak or think of it ; but are satisfied 
when we imagine we sufficiently understand what we 
speak, if we think we recollect that we have had, at 
another time, the notion which is to be joined tothis 
or the other word;' and thus we represent to our- 
selves, as at a distance only, or obscurely, the thing 
denoted by the term. 

<f Hence, it usually happens that, when we combine 
words together, to each of which, apart, a meaning 
or notion answers, we imagine we understand what 
we.utter, though that which isdenoted by such com- 
bined words be impossible, and consequently can 
have no meaning. For that which is impossible is 



378 



OxN THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay J v. 



that can be meant by simple apprehension 
or conception, when applied to a proposi- 
tion. The axiom, therefore, amounts to 
this : — Every proposition, of which you un- 
derstand the meaning distinctly, is possible. 
I am persuaded that I understand as dis- 
tinctly the meaning of this proposition, Any 
two sides of a triangle are together equal 
to (he third, as of this — Any two sides of a 
triangle are together greater than. 1 he third ; 
yet the first of these is impossible. 

Perhaps it will be said, that, though you 
understand the meaning of the impossible 
proposition, you cannot suppose or conceive 
it to be true. 

Here we are to examine the meaning of 
the phrases of supposing and conceiving a 
proposition to be true. I can certainly sup- 
pose it to be true, because I can draw con- 
sequences from it which I find to be impos- 
sible, as well as the proposition itself. 

If, by conceiving it to be true, be meant 
giving some degree of assent to it, how- 
ever small, this, I confess, I cannot do. 
But will it be said that every proposition to 
which I can give any degree of assent, is 
possible ? This contradicts experience, and, 
therefore, the maxim cannot be true in 
this sense. 

Sometimes, when we say that we cannot 
conceive a thing to be true, we mean by that 
expression, that we judge it to be impossible. 
In this sense I cannot, indeed, conceive 
it to be true, that two sides of a triangle 
are equal to the third, I judge it to be 
impossible. If, then, we understand, in 
this sense, that maxim, that nothing we can 
conceive is impossible, the meaning will 
be, that nothing is impossible which we 
judge to be possible. But does it not often 
happen, that what one man judges to be 
possible, another man judges to be impos- 
sible ? The maxim, therefore, is not true 
in this sense. [403] 

I am not able to find any other meaning 
of conceiving a proposition, or of conceiving 
it to be true, besides these I have men- 
tioned. I know nothing that can be meant 
by having the idea of a proposition, but 



nothing at all, and of nothing there can be no idea. 
For instance, we have a notion of gold, as also of 
iron. But it is impossible that iron can at the same 
time 1 e gold, consequently, neither can we have any 
notion of iron-gold ; and yet we understand what 
people mean when they mention iron-gold. 

" In the instance alleged, it certainly strikes every 
one, at first, that the expression iron-gold is an empty 
sound ; but yet there are a thousand instances in which 
it does not so easily strike. For example, when I 
say a rectilineal two-lined figure, a figure contained 
under two right lines, I am equally well understood 
as when I say, a right-lined triangle, a figure c n- 
tainedum<er three right lines. And it should seem 
we had a distinct notion of both figures. However, 
as we shew in Geometry that two right lines can 
never contain space, it is also impossible to form a 
notion of a rectilineal two-lined figure; and conse- 
quently that expression is an empty sound." — P. 55. 



either the understanding its meruimg, or 
the judging of its truth. I can understand 
a proposition that is false or impossible, as 
well as one that is true or possible ; and I 
find that men have contradictory judgments 
about what is possible or impossible, as well 
as about other things. In what sense then 
can it be said, that the having an idea of a 
proposition gives certain evidence that it is 
possible ? 

If it be said, that the idea of a proposition 
is an image of it in the mind, I think indeed 
there cannot be a distinct image, either in 
the mind or elsewhere, of that which is 
impossible ; but what is meant by the image 
of a proposition I am not able to compre- 
hend, and I shall be glad to be informed. 

2. Every proposition that is necessarily 
true stands opposed to a contradictory pro- 
position that is impossible ; and he that 
conceives one conceives both. Thus a man 
who believes that two and three necessarily 
make five, must believe it to be impossible 
that two and three should not make five. 
He conceives both propositions when he 
believes one. Every proposition carries its 
contradictory in its bosom, and both are 
conceived at the same time. " It is con- 
fessed," says Mr Hume, " that, in all cases 
where we dissent from any person, we con- 
ceive both sides of the question ; but we 
can believe only one." From this, it cer- 
tainly follows, that, when we dissent from 
any person about a necessary proposition, 
we conceive one that is imposible ; yet I 
know no philosopher who has made so 
much use of the maxim, that whatever we 
conceive is possible, as Mr Hume. A great 
part of his peculiar tenets is built upon it ; 
and, if it is true, they must be true. But 
he did not perceive that, in the passage 
now quoted, the truth of which is evident, 
he contradicts it himself. [404] 

3. Mathematicians have, in many cases, 
proved some things to be possible, and 
others to be impossible, which, without 
demonstration, would not have been be- 
lieved. Yet I have never found that any 
mathematician has attempted to prove a 
thing to be possible, because it can be con- 
ceived ; or impossible, because it cannot be 
conceived.* Why is not this maxim applied 
to determine whether it is possible to square 
the circle ? a point about which very emi- 
nent mathematicians have differed. It is 
easy to conceive that, in the infinite series 
of numbers, and intermediate fractions, 
some one number, integral or fractional, 
may bear the same ratio to another, as the 
side of a square bears to its diagonal ;-f- yet, 

* All geometry is, in fact, founded on our intui- 
tions of space— that is, in comm< n language, on our 
conceptions of space and its relations. — H. 

t We are able to conceive nothing infinite; and we 
mav suppose, but we cannot conceive, represent, or 
itnaffine, the possibility in question. — H. 

[403, 10 i ; 



ciiAP.iv.] OF THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT IN THE MIND. 379 



however conceivable this may be, it may be 
demonstrated to be impossible. 

4. Mathematicians often require us to 
conceive things that are impossible, in order 
to prove them to be so. This is the case in 
all their demonstrations ad absurdum. 
Conceive, says Euclid, a right line drawn 
from one point of the circumference of a 
circle to another, to fall without the circle :* 
I conceive this — I reason from it, until I 
come to a consequence that is manifestly 
absurd ; and from thence conclude that the 
thing which I conceived is impossible. 

Having said so much to shew that our 
power of conceiving a proposition is no 
criterion of its possibility or impossibility, I 
shall add a few observations on the extent 
of our knowledge of this kind. 

1. There are many propositions which, 
by the faculties God has given us, we judge 
to be necessary, as well as true. All 
mathematical propositions are of this kind, 
and many others. The contradictories of 
such propositions must be impossible. Our 
knowledge, therefore, of what is impossible, 
must, at least, be as extensive as our know- 
ledge of necessary truth. 

2. By our senses, by memory, by testi- 
mony, and by other means, we know many 
things to be true which do not appear to be 
necessary. But whatever is true is pos- 
sible. Our knowledge, therefore, of what is 
possible must, at least, extend as far as our 
knowledge of truth. [405] 

3. If a man pretends to determine the 
possibility or impossibility of things beyond 
these limits, let him bring proof. I do not 
say that no such proof can be brought. It 
has been brought in many cases, particu- 
larly in mathematics. But I say that his 
being able to conceive a thing, is no proof 
that it is possible.-]* Mathematics afford 
many instances of impossibilities in the 
nature of things, which no man would have 
believed if they had not been strictly de- 
monstrated. Perhaps, if we were able to 
reason demonstratively in other subjects, to 
as great extent as in mathematics, we might 
find many things to be impossible, which 
we conclude without hesitation, to be pos- 
sible. 

It is possible, you say, that God might 
have made an universe of sensible and ra- 
tional creatures, into which neither natural 
nor moral evil should ever enter. It may 
be so, for what I know. But how do you 
know that it is possible ? That you can 
conceive it, I grant ; but this is no proof. 



* Euclid does not require us to conceive or imagine 
any such impossibility. The proposition to which 
Reid must refer, is the second of the third Book of 
the Elements. — H. 

t Not, certainly, that it is really possible, but that 
»t is problematically possible — i. e., involves no con- 
tradiction — violates no law of thought. This latter 
is that possibility alone in question.— H. 
[405, 406] 



I cannot admit, as an argument, or even as 
a pressing difficulty, what is grounded on 
the supposition that such a thing is possible, 
when there is no good evidence that it is 
possible, and, for anything we know, it may, 
in the nature of things, be impossible. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT IN THE MIND. 

Every man is conscious of a succession 
of thoughts which pass in his mind while he 
is awake, even when they are not excited 
by external objects. [406] 

The mind, on this account, may be com- 
pared to liquor in the state of fermentation. 
When it is not in this state, being once at 
rest, it remains at rest, until it is moved by 
some external impulse. But, in the state 
of fermentation, it has some cause of motion 
in itself, which, even when there is no im- 
pulse from without, suffers it not to be at 
rest a moment, but produces a constant 
motion and ebullition, while it continues to 
ferment. 

There is surely no similitude between 
motion and thought ; but there is an analogy, 
so obvious to all men, that the same words 
are often applied to both ; and many modi- 
fications of thought have no name but such 
as is borrowed from the modifications of 
motion. Many thoughts are excited by the 
senses. The causes or occasions of these 
may be considered as external. But, when 
such external causes do not operate upon 
us, we continue to think from some internal 
cause. From the constitution of the mind 
itself there is a constant ebullition of thought, 
a constant intestine motion ; not only of 
thoughts barely speculative, but of senti- 
ments, passions, and affections, which attend 
them. 

This continued succession of thought has, 
by modern philosophers, been called the 
imagination. * I think it was formerly called 
the fancy, or the phantasy.-f If the old 
name be laid aside, it were to be wished 
that it had got a name less ambiguous than 
that of imagination, a name which had two 
or three meanings besides. 

It is often called the train of ideas. This 
may lead one to think that it is a train of 
bare conceptions ; but this would surely be 
a mistake. It is made up of many other 
operations of mind, as well as of concep- 
tions, or ideas. 

* By some only, and that improperly. — H. 

t The Latin Imagvnatfa, with its modifications in 
the vulgar languages, was employed both in ancient 
and modern times to express what the Greeks deno- 
minated <bu.\Tu.<r'ict.. Phantasy, of which Phansy or 
Fancy is a corruption, and now employed in a mure 
limited sense, was a common name for Imagination 
with the old English writers. — H. 



380 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS 



[essay Hit 



Memory, judgment, reasoning, passions, 
affections, and purposes — in a word, every 
operation of the mind, excepting those of 
sense — is exerted occasionally in this train 
of thought, and has its share as an ingre- 
dient ; so that we must take the word idea 
in a very extensive sense, if we make the 
train of our thoughts to be only a train of 
ideas. [407] 

To pass from the name, and consider the 
thing, we may observe, that the trains of 
thought in the mind are of two kinds : they 
are either such as flow spontaneously, like 
water from a fountain, without any exer- 
tion of a governing principle to arrange 
them ; or they are regulated and directed 
by an active effort of the mind, with some 
view and intention. 

Before we consider these in their order, 
it is proper to premise that these two kinds, 
however distinct in their nature, are for 
the most part mixed, in persons awake and 
come to years of understanding. 

On the one hand, we are rarely so vacant 
of all project and design, as to let our 
thoughts take their own course, without 
the least check or direction. Or if, at any 
time, we should be in this state, some object 
will present itself, which is too interesting 
not to engage the attention and rouse the 
active or contemplative powers that were 
at rest. 

On the other hand, when a man is giving 
the most intense application to any specula- 
tion, or to any scheme of conduct, when he 
wills to exclude every thought that is fo- 
reign to his present purpose, such thoughts 
will often impertinently intrude upon him, 
in spite of his endeavours to the contrary, 
and occupy, by a kind of violence, some 
part of the time destined to another pur- 
pose. One man may have the command 
of his thoughts more than another man, 
and the same man more at one time than 
at another. But, I apprehend, in the best 
trained mind, the thoughts will sometimes 
be restive, sometimes capricious and self- 
willed, when we wish to have them most 
under command. [408] 

It has been observed very justly, that 
we must not ascribe to the mind the power 
of calling up any thought at pleasure, be- 
cause such a call or volition supposes that 
thought to be already in the mind; for, 
otherwise, how should it be the object of 
volition ? As this must be granted on the 
one hand, so it is no less certain, on the 
other, that a man has a considerable power 
in regulating and disposing his own thoughts. 
Of this every man is conscious, and I can 
no more doubt of it than I can doubt whether 
I think at all. 

We seem to treat the thoughts that pre- 
sent themselves to the fancy in crowds, as 
a great man treats those that attend his 



levee. They are all ambitious of his at- 
tention : he goes round the circle, bestow- 
ing a bow upon one, a smile upon another ; 
asks a short question of a third ; while a 
fourth is honoured with a particular con- 
ference ; and the greater part have no par- 
ticular mark of attention, but go as they 
came. It is true, he can give no mark of 
his attention to those who were not there, 
but he has a sufficient number for making 
a choice and distinction. 

In like manner, a number of thoughts 
present themselves to the fancy spontane- 
ously ; but, if we pay no attention to them, 
nor hold any conference with them, they 
pass with the crowd, and are immediately 
forgot, as - if they had never appeared. But 
those to which we think proper to pay at- 
tention, may be stopped, examined, and 
arranged, for any particular purpose we 
have in view. 

It may likewise be observed, that a train 
of thought, which was at first composed by 
application and judgment, when it has 
been often repeated, and becomes familiar, 
will present itself spontaneously. Thus, 
when a man has composed an air hi music, 
so as to please his own ear, after he has 
played or sung it often, the notes will 
arrange themselves in just order, and it 
requires no effort to regulate their succes- 
sion. [409] 

Thus we see that the fancy is made up 
of trains of thinking — some of which are 
spontaneous, others studied and regulated, 
and the greater part are mixed of both 
kinds, and take their denomination from that 
which is most prevalent ; and that a train 
of thought which at first was studied and 
composed, may, by habit, present itself 
spontaneously. Having premised these 
things, let us return to those trains of 
thought which are spontaneous, which must 
be first in the order of nature. 

When the work of the day is over, and a 
man lies down to relax his body and mind, 
he cannot cease from thinking, though he 
desires it. Something occurs to his fancy ; 
that is followed by another thing ; and so his 
thoughts are carried on from one object to 
another, until sleep does the scene. 

In this operation* of the mind, it is not 
faculty only that is employed; there are 
many that join together in its production. 
Sometimes the transactions of the day are 
brought upon the stage, and acted over 
again, as it were, upon this theatre of the 
imagination. In this case, memory surely 
acts the most considerable part, since the 
scenes exhibited are not fictions, but realities, 
which we remember ; yet, in this case, the 



* The word process might be here preferable. 
Operation would -denote that the mind is active in 
associating the train of thought.— H. 

[407-409] 



chap, iv.] OF THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT IN THE MIND. 



381 



memory does not act alone, other powers are 
employed, and attend upon their proper 
objects. The transactions remembered will 
be more or less interesting ; and we cannot 
then review our own conduct, nor that of 
others, without passing some judgment upon 
it. This we approve, that we disapprove. 
This elevates, that humbles and depresses 
us. Persons that are not absolutely indif- 
ferent to us, can hardly appear, even to the 
imagination, without some friendly or un- 
friendly emotion. We judge and reason 
about things as well as persons in such 
reveries. We remember what a man said 
and did ; from this we pass to his designs 
and to his general character, and frame 
some hypothesis to make the whole con- 
sistent. Such trains of thought we may 
call historical. [410] 

There are others which we may call ro- 
mantic, in which the plot is formed by the 
creative power of fancy, without any regard 
to what did or will happen. In these also, 
the powers of judgment, taste, moral senti- 
ment, as well as the passions and affections, 
come in and take a share in the execu- 
tion. 

In these scenes, the man himself com- 
monly acts a very distinguished part, and 
seldom does anything which he cannot ap- 
prove. Here the miser will be generous, 
the coward brave, and the knave honest. 
Mr Addison, in the '• Spectator," calls this 
play of the fancy, castle-building. 

The young politician, who has turned his 
thoughts to the affairs of government, be- 
comes, in his imagination, a minister of 
state. He examines every spring and wheel 
of the machine of government with the 
nicest eye and the most exact judgment. 
He finds a proper remedy for every disorder 
of the commonwealth, quickens trade and 
manufactures by salutary laws, encourages 
arts and sciences, and makes the nation 
happy at home and respected abroad. He 
feels the reward of his good administration, 
in that self-approbation which attends it, 
.and is happy in acquiring, by his wise and 
patriotic conduct, the blessings of the present 
age, and the praises of those that are to 
come. 

It is probable that, upon the stage of 
imagination, more great exploits have been 
performed in every age than have been 
upon the stage of life from the beginning of 
the world. An innate desire of self-appro- 
bation is undoubtedly a part of the human 
constitution. It is a powerful spur to 
worthy conduct, and is intended as such by 
the Author of our being. A man cannot 
be easy or happy, unless this desire be in 
some measure gratified. While he con- 
ceives himself worthless and base, he can 
relish no enjoyment. The humiliating, 
mortifying sentiment must be removed, and 
[410-412] 



this natural desire of self-approbation will 
either produce a noble effort to acquire real 
worth, which is its proper direction, or it 
will lead into some of those arts of self- 
deceit, which create a false opinion of 
worth. [411] 

A castle-builder, in the fictitious scenes 
of his fancy, will figure, not according to his 
real character, but according to the highest 
opinion he has been able to form of himself, 
and perhaps far beyond that opinion. For, 
in those imaginary conflicts, the passions 
easily yield to reason, and a man exerts the 
noblest efforts of virtue and magnanimity; 
with the same ease as, in his dreams, he 
flies through the air or plunges to the bot- 
tom of the ocean. 

The romantic scenes of fancy are most 
commonly the occupation of young minds, 
not yet so deeply engaged in life as to have 
their thoughts taken up by its real cares 
and business. 

Those active powers of the mind, which 
are most luxuriant by constitution, or have 
been most cherished by education, im- 
patient to exert themselves, hurry the 
thought into scenes that give them play ; 
and the boy commences in imagination, 
according to the bent of his mind, a general 
or a statesman, a poet or an orator. 

When the fair ones become castle-build- 
ers, they use different materials ; and, while 
the young soldier is carried into the field of 
Mars, where he pierces the thickest squad- 
rons of the enemy, despising death in all 
its forms, the gay and lovely nymph, whose 
heart has never felt the tender passion, is 
transported into a brilliant assembly, where 
she draws the attention of every eye, and 
makes an impression on the noblest heart. 

But no sooner has Cupid's arrow found 
its way into her own heart, than the whole 
scenery of her imagination is changed. 
Balls and assemblies have now no charms. 
Woods and groves, the flowery bank and 
the crystal fountain, are the scenes she 
frequents in imagination. She becomes an 
Arcadian shepherdess, feeding her flock 
beside that of her Strephon, and wants no 
more to complete her happiness. [412] 

In a few years the lovesick maid is 
transformed into the solicitous mother. Her 
smiling offspring play around her. She 
views them with a parent's eye. Her ima- 
gination immediately raises them to man- 
hood, and brings them forth upon the stage 
of life. One son makes a figure in the 
army, another shines at the bar ; her 
daughters are happily disposed of in mar- 
riage, and bring new alliances to the family. 
Her children's children rise up before her, 
and venerate her grey hairs. 

Thus the spontaneous sallies of fancy are 
as various as the cares and fears, the de- 
sires and hopes, of man. 



382 



OX THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



Quicquid ap.nnt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, 
Gaudia, discursus : 

These fill up the scenes of fancy, as well 
as the page of the satirist. Whatever 
possesses the heart makes occasional ex- 
cursions into the imagination, and acts such 
scenes upon that theatre as are agreeable 
to the prevailing passion. The man of 
traffic, who has committed a rich cargo to 
the inconstant ocean, follows it in his 
thought, and, according as his hopes or his 
fears prevail, he is haunted with storms, 
and rocks, and shipwreck ; or he makes a 
happy and a lucrative voyage, and, before 
his vessel has lost sight of land, he has dis- 
posed of the profit which she is to bring at 
her return. 

The poet is carried into the Elysian fields, 
where he converses with the ghosts of 
Homer and Orpheus. The philosopher makes 
a tour through the planetary system, or 
goes down to the centre of the earth, and 
examines its various strata. In the devout 
man likewise, the great objects that possess 
his heart often play in his imagination : 
sometimes he is transported to the regions 
of the blessed, from whence he looks down 
with pity upon the folly and the pageantry 
of human life; or he prostrates himself 
before the throne of the Most High with 
devout veneration ; or he converses with 
celestial spirits about the natural and moral 
kingdom of God, which he now sees only 
by a faint light, but hopes hereafter to view 
with a steadier and brighter ray. [413] 

In persons come to maturity, there is, 
even in these spontaneous sallies of fancy, 
some arrangement of thought ; and I con- 
ceive that it will be readily allowed, that 'in 
those who have the greatest stock of know- 
ledge, and the best natural parts, even the 
spontaneous movements of fancy will be 
the most regular and connected. They 
have an order, connection, and unity, by 
which they are no less distinguished from 
the dreams of one asleep, or the ravings of 
one delirious on the one hand, than from 
the finished productions of art on the other. 

How is this regular arrangement brought 
about ? It has all the marks of judgment 
and reason, yet it seems to go before judg- 
ment, and to spring forth spontaneously. 

Shall we believe with Leibnitz, that the 
mind was originally formed like a watch 
wound up ; and that all its thoughts, pur- 
poses, passions, and actions, are effected 
by the gradual evolution of the original 
spring of the machine, and succeed each 
other in order, as necessarily as the motions 
and pulsations of a watch ? 

If a child of three or four years were put 
to account for the phenomena of a watch, 
he would conceive that there is a little man 
within the watch, or some other little animal, 
that beats continually, and produces the 



motion. Whether the hypothesis of this 
young philosopher, in turning the watch- 
spring into a man, or that of the German 
philosopher, in turning a man into a watch- 
spring, be the most rational, seems hard to 
determine.* 

To account for the regularity of our first 
thoughts, from motions of animal spirits, 
vibrations of nerves, attractions of ideas, or 
from any other unthinking cause, whether 
mechanical or contingent, seems equally 
irrational. [4 14 J 

If we be not able to distinguish the 
strongest marks of thought and design from 
the effects of mechanism or contingency, the 
consequence will be very melancholy ; foi 
it must necessarily follow, that we have no., 
evidence of thought in any of our fellow 
men — nay, that we have no evidence of 
thought or design in the structure and go- 
vernment of the universe. If a good period 
or sentence was ever produced without 
having had any judgment previously em- 
ployed about it, why not an Iliad or JEneid ? 
They differ only in less and more ; and we 
should do injustice to the philosopher of 
Laputa, in laughing at his project of making 
poems by the turning of a wheel, if a con- 
currence of unthinking causes may produce 
a rational train of thought. 

It is, therefore, in itself highly probable 
to say no more, that whatsoever is regular 
and rational in a train of thought, which 
presents itself spontaneously to a man's 
fancy, without any'study, is a copy of what 
had been before composed by his own ra- 
tional powers, or those of some other person. 

We certainly judge so in similar cases. 
Thus, in a book I find a train of thinking, 
which has the marks of knowledge and 
judgment. I ask how it was produced ? It 
is printed in a book. This does not satisfy 
me, because the book has no knowledge nor 
reason. I am told that a printer printed 
it, and a compositor set the types. Neither 
does this satisfy me. These causes, per- 
haps, knew very little of the subject. There 
must be a prior cause of the composition. 
It was printed from a manuscript. True. 
But the manuscript is as ignorant as the 
printed book. The manuscript was written 
or dictated by a man of knowledge and 
judgment. This, and this only, will satisfy 
a man of common understanding ; and it 
appears to him extremely ridiculous to be- 
lieve that such a train of thinking could 
originally be produced by any cause that 
neither reasons nor thinks. [415] 

Whether such a train of thinking be 
printed in a book, or printed, so to speak, 
in his mind, and issue spontaneously from 
his fancy, it must have been composed with 



* The theory of our mental associations owes much 
to the philosophers of the Leibnitzian school.— H. 



[413-415] 



chap, iv.] OF THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT IN THE MIND. 



383 



judgment by himself, or by some other 
rational being. 

This, I think, will be confirmed by tracing 
the progress of the human fancy as far 
back as we are able. 

We have not the means of knowing how 
the fancy is employed in infants. Their 
time is divided between the employment of 
their senses and sound sleep : so that there 
is little time left for imagination, and the 
materials it has to work upon are probably 
very scanty. A few days after they are 
born, sometimes a few hours, we see them 
smile in their sleep. But what they smile 
at is not easy to guess ; for they do not 
smile at anything they see, when awake, 
for some months after they are born. It 
is likewise common to see them move their 
lips in sleep, as if they were sucking. 

These things seem to discover some 
working of the imagination ; but there is 
no reason to think that there is any regular 
train of thought in the mind of infants. 

By a regular train of thought, I mean 
that which has a beginning, a middle, and 
an end, an arrangement of its parts, ac- 
cording to some rule, or with some inten- 
tion. Thus, the conception of a design, 
and of the means of executing it ; the con- 
ception of a whole, and the number and 
order of the parts. These are instances of 
the most simple trains of thought that can 
be called regular. 

Man has undoubtedly a power (whether 
we call it taste or judgment is not of any 
consequence in the present argument) 
whereby he distinguishes between a com- 
position and a heap of materials ; between 
a house, for instance, and a heap of stones ; 
between a sentence and a heap of words ; 
between a picture and a heap of colours. 
[41 6 J It does not appear to me that chil- 
dren have any regular trains of thought 
until this power begins to operate. Those 
who are born such idiots as never to shew 
any signs of this power, shew as little any 
signs of regularity of thought. It seems, 
therefore, that this power is connected with 
all regular trains of thought, and may be 
the cause of them. 

Such trains of thought discover them- 
selves iu children about two years of age. 
They can then give attention to the opera- 
tions of older children in making their 
little houses, and ships, and other such 
things, hi imitation of the works of men. 
They are then capable of understanding a 
little of language, which shews both a 
regular train of thinking, and some degree 
of abstraction. I think we may perceive a 
distinction between the faculties of children 
of two or three years of age, and those of 
the most sagacious brutes. They can then 
perceive design and regularity in the works 
of others, especially of older children ; their 
["416, 417] 



little minds are fired with the discovery ; 
they are eager to imitate it, and never at 
rest till they can exhibit something of the 
same kind. 

When a child first learns by imitation 
to do something that requires design, how 
does he exult ! Pythagoras was not more 
happy in the discovery of his famous theo- 
rem. He seems then first to reflect upon 
himself, and to swell with self-esteem. His 
eyes sparkle. He is impatient to shew his 
performance to all about him, and thinks 
himself entitled to their applause. He is 
applauded by all, and feels the same emo- 
tion from this applause, as a Roman Con- 
sul did from a triumph. He has now a 
consciousness of some worth in himself. He 
assumes a superiority over those who are 
not so wise, and pays respect to those who 
are wiser than himself. He attempts 
something else, and is every day reaping 
new laurels. 

As children grow up, they are delighted 
with tales, with childish games, with designs 
and stratagems. Everything of this kind 
stores the fancy with a new regular train of 
thought, which becomes familiar by repeti- 
tion, so that one part draws the whole after 
it in the imagination. [417] 

The imagination of a child, like the hand 
of a painter, is long employed in copying 
the works of others, before it attempts any 
invention of its own. 

The power of invention is not yet brought 
forth ; but it is coming forward, and, like 
the bud of a tree, is ready to burst its 
integuments, when some accident aids its 
eruption. 

There is no power of the understanding 
that gives so much pleasure to the owner, 
as that of invention, whether it be employed 
in mechanics, in science, in the conduct of 
life, in poetry, in wit, or in the fine arts. 
One who is conscious of it, acquires thereby 
a worth and importance in his own eye 
which he had not before. He looks upon 
himself as one who formerly lived upon the 
bounty and gratuity of others, but who has 
now acquired some property of his own. 
When this power begins to be felt in the 
young mind, it has the grace of novelty 
added to its other charms, and, like the 
youngest child of the family, is caressed 
beyond all the rest. 

We may be sure, .herefore, that, as soon 
as children are conscious of this power, 
they will exercise it in such ways as are 
suited to their age, and to the objects they 
are employed about. This gives rise to 
innumerable new associations, and regular 
trains of thought, which make the deeper 
impression upon the mind, as they are its 
exclusive property. 

I am aware that the power of invention 
is distributed among men more unequally 



384 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay iv. 



than almost any other. When it is able to 
produce anything that is interesting to man- 
kind we call it genius ; a talent which is the 
lot of very few. But there is, perhaps, a 
lower kind or lower degree of invention that 
is more common. However this may be, it 
must be allowed that the power of invention 
in those who have it, will produce many 
new regular trains of thought ; and these 
being expressed in works of art, in writing, 
or in discourse, will be copied by others. 
[418] 

Thus, I conceive the minds of children, 
as soon as they have judgment to distin- 
guish what is regular, orderly, and connected, 
from a mere medley of thought, are fur- 
nished with regular trains of thinking by 
these means. 

First and chiefly, by copying what they 
see in the works and in the discourse of 
others. Man is the most imitative of all 
animals ; he not only imitates with inten- 
tion, and purposely, what he thinks has any 
grace or beauty, but even without intention, 
he is led, by a kind of instinct, which it is 
difficult to resist, into the modes of speaking, 
thinking, and acting, which he has been ac- 
customed to see in his early years. The 
more children see of what is regular and 
beautiful in what is presented to them, the 
more they are led to observe and to imitate 
it. 

This is the chief part of their stock, and 
descends to them by a kind of tradition 
from those who came before them ; and we 
shall find that the fancy of most men is 
furnished from those they have conversed 
with, as well as their religion, language, 
and manners. 

Secondly, By the additions or innovations 
that are properly their own, these will be 
greater or less, in proportion to their study 
and invention ; but in the bulk of mankind 
are not very considerable. 

Every profession and every rank in life, 
has a manner of thinking, and turn of fancy 
that is proper to it ; by which it is character- 
ised in comedies and works of humour. 
The bulk of men of the same nation, of the 
same rank, and of the same occupation, are 
cast as, it were, in the same mould. This 
mould itself changes gradually, but slowly, 
by new inventions, by intercourse with 
strangers, or by other accidents.* [419] 

The condition of man requires a longer 
infancy and youth than that of other ani- 
mals ; for this reason, among others, that 
almost every station in civil society requires 
a multitude of regular trains of thought, to 



«« * Non ad rationem sed ad similitudinem compo- 

nimur," says Seneca ; and Schiller — 

•« Man— he is aye an imitative creature, 
And he who is the foremost leads the flock." 

There would be no end of quotations to the same 

eftect.— H. 



be not only acquired, but to be made so 
familiar by frequent repetition, as to pre- 
sent themselves spontaneously when there 
is occasion for them. 

The imagination even of men of good 
parts never serves them readily but in 
things wherein it has been much exercised. 
A minister of state holds a conference with 
a foreign ambassador with no greater emo- 
tion than a professor in a college prelects to 
his audience. The imagination of each 
presents to him what the occasion requires 
to be said, and how. Let them change 
places, and both would find themselves at a 
loss. 

The habits which the human mind is 
capable of acquiring by exercise are won- 
derful in many instances ; in none more 
wonderful than in that versatility of imagin- 
ation which a well-bred man acquires by 
being much exercised in the various scenes 
of life. In the morning he visits a friend 
in affliction. Here his imagination brings 
forth from its store every topic of consola- 
tion ; everything that is agreeable to the 
laws of friendship and sympathy, and no- 
thing that is not so. From thence he drives 
to the minister's levee, where imagination 
readily suggests what is proper to be said 
or replied to every man, and in what man- 
ner, according to the degree of acquaint- 
ance or familiarity, of rank or dependence, 
of opposition or concurrence of interests, of 
confidence or distrust, that is between them. 
Nor does all this employment hinder him 
from carrying on some design with much 
artifice, and endeavouring to penetrate into 
the views of others through the closest dis- 
guises. From the levee he goes to the 
Housf of Commons, and speaks upon the 
affairs of the nation ; from thence to a ball 
or assembly, and entertains the ladies. His 
imagination puts on the friend, the courtier, 
the patriot, the fine gentleman, with more 
ease than we put off one suit and put on 
another. [420] 

This is the effect of training and exer- 
cise. For a man of equal parts and know- 
ledge, but unaccustomed to those scenes of 
public life, is quite disconcerted when first 
brought into them. His thoughts are put 
to flight, and he cannot rally them. 

There are feats of imagination to be 
learned by application and practice, as won- 
derful as the feats of balancers and rope- 
dancers, and often as useless. 

When a man can make a hundred verses 
standing on one foot, or play three or four 
games at chess at the same time without 
seeing the board, it is probable he hath 
spent his life in acquiring such a feat. How- 
ever, such unusual pheenomena shew what 
habits of imagination may be acquired. 

When such habits are acquired and per- 
fected, they are exercised without any labo- 
[418-420] 



criAP. iv.] OF THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT IN THE MIND. 



385 



rious effort ; like the habit of playing upon 
an instrument of music There are innu- 
merable motions of the fingers upon the 
stops or keys, which must be directed in 
one particular train or succession. There 
is only one arrangement of those motions 
that is right, while there are ten thousand 
that are wrong, and would spoil the music 
The musician thinks not in the least of the 
arrangement of those motions ; he has a dis- 
tinct idea of the tune, and wills to play it. 
The motions of the fingers arrange them- 
selves so as to answer his intention. 

In like manner, when a man speaks upon a 
subject with which he is acquainted, there is 
a certain arrangement of his thoughts and 
words necessary to make his discourse sen- 
sible, pertinent, and grammatical. In every 
sentence there are more rules of grammar, 
logic, and rhetoric, that may be transgressed, 
than there are words and letters. He 
speaks without thinking of any of those 
rules, and yet observes them all, as if they 
were all in his eye. [421] 

This is a habit so similar to that of a 
player on an instrument, that I think both 
must be got in the same way — that is, by 
much practice, and the power of habit. 

When a man speaks well and methodi- 
cally upon a subject without study and with 
perfect ease, I believe we may take it for 
granted that his thoughts run in a beaten 
track. There is a mould in his mind — 
which has been formed by much practice, or 
by study — for this very subject, or for some 
other so similar and analogous that his 
discourse falls into this mould with ease, 
and takes its form from it. 

Hitherto we have considered the opera- 
tions of fancy that are either spontaneous, 
or, at least, require no laborious effort to 
guide and direct them, and have endeav- 
oured to account for that degree of regu- 
larity and arrangement which is found even 
in them. The natural powers of judgment 
And invention, the pleasure that always 
attends the exercise of those powers, the 
means we have of improving them by imi- 
tation of others, and the effect of practice 
and habits, seem to me sufficiently to 
account for this phaenomenon, without sup- 
posing any unaccountable attractions of ideas 
by which they arrange themselves. 

But we are able to direct our thoughts in 
a certain course, so as to perform a destined 
task. 

Every work of art has its model framed 
in the imagination. Here the " Iliad" of 
Homer, the " Republic" of Plato, the 
" Principia" of Newton, were fabricated. 
Shall we believe that those works took the 
form in which they now appear of them- 
selves ? — that the sentiments, the manners, 
and the passions arranged themselves at 
once in the mind of Homer, so as to form 
[421-423] 



the " Iliad ?" Was there no more effort 
in the composition than there is in telling a 
well-known tale, or singing a favourite 
song P This cannot be believed. [422] 

Granting that some happy thought first 
suggested the design of singing the wrath of 
Achilles, yet, surely, it was a matter of 
judgment and choice where the narration 
should begin and where it should end. 

Granting that the fertility of the poet's 
imagination suggested a variety of rich ma- 
terials, was not judgment necessary to select 
what was proper, to reject what was im- 
proper, to arrange the materials into a just 
composition, and to adapt them to each 
other, and to the design of the whole ? 

No man can believe that Homer's ideas, 
merely by certain sympathies and antipa- 
thies, by certain attractions and repulsions 
inherent in their natures, arranged them- 
selves according to the most perfect rules of 
epic poetry; and Newton's, according to 
the rules of mathematical composition. 

I should sooner believe that the poet, 
after he invoked his muse, did nothing at 
all but listen to the song of the goddess. 
Poets, indeed, and other artists, must make 
their works appear natural ; but nature is 
the perfection of art, and there can be no 
just imitation of nature without art. When 
the building is finished, the rubbish, the 
scaffolds, the tools and engines are carried 
out of sight ; but we know it could not have 
been reared without them. 

The train of thinking, therefore, is capable 
of being guided and directed, much in the 
same manner as the horse we ride. The 
horse has his strength, his agility, and his 
mettle in himself ; he has been taught cer- 
tain movements, and many useful habits, 
that make him more subservient to our 
purposes and obedient to our will ; but to 
accomplish a journey, he must be directed 
by the rider. 

In like manner, fancy has its original 
powers, which are very different in different 
persons ; it has likewise more regular mo- 
tions, to which it has been trained by along 
course of discipline and exercise, and by 
which it may, extempore, and without much 
effort, produce things that have a consid- 
erable degree of beauty, regularity, and 
design. [423] 

But the most perfect works of design are 
never extemporary. Our first thoughts are 
reviewed ; we place them at a proper dis 
tance ; examine eveiy part, and take a 
complex view of the whole. By our criti- 
cal faculties, we perceive this part to be 
redundant, that deficient ; here is a want 
of nerves, there a want of delicacy ; this is 
obscure, that too diffuse. Things are mar- 
shalled anew, according to a second and 
more deliberate judgment ; what was defi- 
cient, is supplied ; what was dislocated, is 
2 u 



386 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IV, 



put in joint ; redundances are lopped off, 
and the whole polished. 

Though poets, of all artists, make the 
highest claim to inspiration ; yet, if we be- 
lieve Horace, a competent judge, no pro- 
duction in that art can have merit which 
has not cost such labour as this in the 
birth. 

" VosO! 
Pompilius sanguis, carmen reprehendite quod non 
Multa dies, et mult a litura coercuit, atque 
Perfectum decies non castigavit ad unguem." 

The conclusion I would draw from all 
that has been said upon this subject is, 
That everything that is regular in that 
train of thought which we call fancy or 
imagination, from the little designs and 
reveries of children to the grandest pro- 
ductions of human genius, was originally 
the offspring of judgment or taste, applied 
with some effort greater or less. What 
one person composed with art and judg- 
ment, is imitated by another with great 
ease; What a man himself at first com- 
posed with pains, becomes by habit so 
familiar as to offer itself spontaneously to 
his fancy afterwards. But nothing that is 
regular was ever at first conceived without 
design, attention, and care. [424] 

I shall now make a few reflections upon a 
theory which has been applied to account 
for this successive train of thought in the 
mind. It was hinted by Mr Hobbes, but 
has drawn more attention since it was dis- 
tinctly explained by Mr Hume. 

That author* thinks that the train of 
thought in the mind is owing to a kind of 
attraction which ideas have for other ideas 
that bear certain relations to them. He 
thinks the complex ideas — which are the 
common subjects of our thoughts and rea- 
soning — are owing to the same cause. The 
relations which produce this attraction of 
ideas, he thinks, are these three only — to 
wit, causation, contiguity in time or place, 
and similitude. He asserts that these are 
the only general principles that unite ideas. 
And having, in another place, occasion to 
take notice of contrariety as a principle of 
connection among ideas, in order to recon- 
cile this to his system, he tells us gravely, 
that contrariety may perhaps be considered 
as a mixture of causation and resemblance. 
That ideas which have any of these three 
relations do mutually attract each other, so 
that one of them being presented to the 
fancy, the other is drawn along with it — 
this he seems to think an original property 
of the mind, or rather of the ideas, and 
therefore inexplicable. -f- 



* He should have said this author, for Hume is 
referred to H. 

t See above, p. 294, b, note f. The history of the 
doctrine of Association has never yet been at all 
adequately developed. Some of the most remark. 



First, I observe, with regard to this 
theory, that, although it is true that the 
thought of any object is apt to lead us to 
the thought of its cause or effect, of things 
contiguous to it in time or place, or of 
things resembling it, yet this enumeration 
of the relations of things which are apt to 
lead us from one object to another, is very 
inaccurate. 

The enumeration is too large upon his 
own principles ; but it is by far too scanty in 
reality. Causation, according to his philo- 
sophy, implies nothing more than a con- 
stant conjunction observed between the 
cause and the effect, and, therefore, conti- 
guity must include causation, and his three 
principles of attraction are reduced to two. 
[425] 

But when we take all the three, the enu- 
meration is, in reality, very incomplete. 
Every relation of things has a tendency, 
more or less, to lead the thought, in a 
thinking mind, from one to the other ; and 
not only every relation, but every kind of 
contrariety and opposition. What Mr 
Hume says— that contrariety may perhaps 
be considered as a mixture " of causation 
and resemblance" — I can as little compro- 
hend as if he had said that figure may per- 
haps be considered as a mixture of colour 
and sound. 

Our thoughts pass easily from the end 
to the means ; from any truth to the evi- 
dence on which it is founded, the conse- 
quences that may be drawn from it, or the 
use that may be made of it. From a part 
we are easily led to think of the whole, from 
a subject to its qualities, or from things 
related to the relation. Such transitions in 
thinking must have been made thousands 
of times by every man who thinks and 
reasons, and thereby become, as it were, 
beaten tracks for the imagination. 

Not only the relations of objects to each 
other influence our train of thinking, but 
the relation they bear to the present tem- 
per and disposition of the mind ; their re- 
lation to the habits we have acquired, 
whether moral or intellectual ; to the com- 
pany we have kept, and to the business in 
which we have been chiefly employed. The 
same event will suggest very different re- 
flections to different persons, and to the 
same person at different times, according 
as he is in good or bad humour, as he is 
lively or dull, angry or pleased, melancholy 
or cheerful. 

Lord Kames, in his " Elements of Criti- 
cism," and Dr Gerard, in his " Essay on 
Genius," have given a much fuller and 
juster enumeration of the causes that in- 
fluence our train of thinking, and I have 



able speculations on this matter are wholly unknown. 
Of these I can, at present, say nothing.— H. See 



Notes D * *, D 



[424, 425] 



chap, iv.] OF THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT IN THE MIND. 



387 



nothing to add to what they have said on 
this subject. 

Secondly, Let us consider how far this 
attraction of ideas must be resolved into 
original qualities of human nature. [426] 

I believe the original principles of the 
mind, of which we can give no account but 
that such is our constitution, are more in 
number than is commonly thought. But 
we ought not to multiply them without 
necessity. 

That trains of thinking, which, by fre- 
quent repetition, have become familiar, 
should spontaneously offer themselves to 
our fancy, seems to require no other origi- 
nal quality but the power of habit. * 

In all rational thinking, and in all rational 
discourse, whether serious or facetious, the 
thought must have some relation to what 
went before. Every man, therefore, from 
the dawn of reason, must have been accus- 
tomed to a train of related objects. These 
please the understanding, and, by custom, 
become like beaten tracks which invite the 
traveller. 

As far as it is in our power to give a 
direction to our thoughts, which it is un- 
doubtedly in a great degree, they will be 
directed by the active principles common 
to men — by our appetites, our passions, our 
affections, our reason, and conscience. And 
that the trains of thinking in our minds are 
chiefly governed by these, according as one 
or another prevails at the time, every man 
will find in his experience. 

If the mind is at any time vacant from 
every passion and desire, there are still 
some objects that are more acceptable to 
us than others. The facetious man is 
pleased with surprising similitudes or con- 
trasts ; the philosopher with the relations 
of things that are subservient to reasoning ; 
the merchant with what tends to profit; 
and the politician with what may mend the 
state. 

A good writer of comedy or romance can 
feign a train of thinking for any of the per- 
sons of his fable, which appears very natu- 
ral, and is approved by the best judges. 
Now, what is it that entitles such a fiction 
to approbation ? Is it that the author has 
given a nice attention to the relations of 
causation, contiguity, and similitude in the 
ideas? [427] This surely is the least 
part of its merit. But the chief part con- 
sists in this, that it corresponds perfectly 
with the general character, the rank, the 
habits, the present situation and passions of 
the person. If this be a just way of judging 
in criticism, it follows necessarily, that the 
circumstances last mentioned have the chief 
influence in suggesting our trains of thought. 

* We can as well explain Habit by Association, 
as Association by Habit— H. 
["426-428] 



It cannot be denied, that the state of the 
body has an influence upon our imagination, 
according as a man is sober or drunk, as 
he is fatigued or refreshed. Crudities and 
indigestion are said to give uneasy dreams, 
and have probably a like effect upon the 
waking thoughts. Opium gives to some 
persons pleasing dreams and pleasing im- 
aginations when awake, and to others such 
as are horrible and distressing. 

These influences of the body upon the 
mind can only be known by experience, and 
I believe we can give no account of them. 

Nor can we, perhaps, give any reason whj. 
we must think without ceasing while we are 
awake. I believe we are likewise origi- 
nally disposed, in imagination, to pass from 
any one object of thought to others that are 
contiguous to it in time or place. This, I 
think, may be observed in brutes and in 
idiots, as well as in children, before any 
habit can be acquired that might account 
for it. The sight of an object is apt to 
suggest to the imagination what has been 
seen or felt in conjunction with it, even 
when the memory of that conjunction is 
gone. 

Such conjunctions of things influence not 
only the imagination, but the belief and the 
passions, especially in children and in 
brutes ; and perhaps all that we call memory 
in brutes is something of this kind. 

They expect events in the same order and 
succession in which they happened before ; 
and by this expectation, their actions and 
passions, as well as their thoughts, are re- 
gulated. [428] A horse takes fright at 
the place where some object frighted him 
before. "We are apt to conclude from this 
that he remembers the former accident. 
But perhaps there is only an association 
formed in his mind between the place and 
the passion of fear, without any distinct 
remembrance. 

Mr Locke has given us a very good 
chapter upon the association of ideas ; and 
by the examples he has given to illustrate 
this doctrine, I think it appears that very 
strong associations may be formed at once — 
not of ideas to ideas only, but of ideas to 
passions and emotions ; and that strong as- 
sociations are never formed at once, but 
when accompanied by some strong passion 
or emotion. I believe this must be resolved 
into the constitution of our nature. 

Mr Hume's opinion — that the complex 
ideas, which are the common objects of 
discourse and reasoning, are formed by those 
original attractions of ideas to which he 
ascribes the train of thoughts in the mind — 
will come under consideration in another 
place. 

To put an end to our remarks upon this 
theory of Mr Hume, I think he has real 
merit in bringing this curious subject under 
2 c2 



388 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay IV. 



the view of philosophers, and carrying it a 
certain length. But I see nothing in this 
theory that should hinder us to conclude, 
that everything in the trains of our thought, 
which bears the marks of judgment and 
reason, has been the product of judgment 
and reason previously exercised, either by 
the. person himself, at that or some former 
time, or by some other person. The at- 
traction of ideas will be the same in a man's 
second thoughts upon any subject as in his 
first. Or, if some change in his circum- 
stances, or in the objects about him, should 
make any change in the attractions of his 
ideas, it is an equal chance whether the 
second be better than the first, or whether 
they be worse. But it is certain that 
every man of judgment and taste will, upon 
a review, correct that train of thought which 
first presented itself. If the attractions of 
ideas are the sole causes of the regular 
arrangement of thought in the fancy, there 
is no use for judgment or taste in any com- 
position, nor indeed any room for their 
operation. [429 J 

There are other reflections, of a more 
practical nature and of higher importance, 
to which this subject leads. 

I believe it will be allowed by every man, 
that our happiness or misery in life, that 
our improvement in any art or science which 
we profess, and that our improvement in 
real virtue and goodness, depend in a very 
great degree on the train of thinking that 
occupies the mind both in our vacant and 
in our more serious hours. As far, there- 
fore, as the direction of our thoughts is in 
our power, (and that it is so in a great 
measure, cannot be doubted) it is of the last 
importance to give them that direction which 
is most subservient to those valuable pur- 



What employment can he have worthy 
of a man, whose imagination is occupied 
only about things low and base, and grovels 
in a narrow field of mean, unanimating, and 
uninteresting objects, insensible to those 
finer and more delicate sentiments, and 
blind to those more enlarged and nobler 
views which elevate the soul, and make it 
conscious of its dignity. 

How different from him whose imagina- 
tion, like an eagle in her flight, takes a wide 
prospect, and observes whatever it presents, 
that is new or beautiful, grand or important ; 
whose rapid wing varies the scene every 
moment, carrying him sometimes through 
the fairy regions of wit and fancy, some- 



times through the more regular and sober 
walks of science and philosophy ! 

The various objects which he surveys, 
according to their different degrees of beauty 
and dignity, raise in him the lively and 
agreeable emotions of taste. Illustrious 
human characters, as they pass in review, 
clothed with their moral qualities, touch his 
heart still more deeply. They not only 
awaken the sense of beauty, but excite the 
sentiment of approbation, and kindle the 
glow of virtue. 

While he views what is truly great and 
glorious in human conduct, his soul catches 
the divine flame, and burns with desire to 
emulate what it admires. [430] 

The human imagination is an ample 
theatre, upon which everything in human 
life, good or bad, great or mean, laudable 
or base, is acted. 

In children, and in some frivolous minds, 
it is a mere toy-shop. And in some, who 
exercise their memory without their judg- 
ment, its furniture is made up of old scraps 
of knowledge, that are thread -bare and 
worn out. 

In some, this theatre is often occupied by 
ghastly superstition, with all her train of 
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimccras dire. 
Sometimes it is haunted with all the infernal 
demons, and made the forge of plots, and 
rapine, and murder. Here everything that 
is black and detestable is first contrived, and 
a thousand wicked designs conceived that 
are never executed. Here, too, the furies 
act their part, taking a severe though secret 
vengeance upon the self-condemned criminal. 

How happy is that mind in which the light 
of real knowledge dispels the phantoms of 
superstition ; in which the belief and rever- 
ence of a perfect all-governing mind casts 
out all fear but the fear of acting wrong ; 
in which serenity and cheerfulness, inno- 
cence, humanity, and candour, guard the im- 
agination against the entrance of every un- 
hallowed intruder, and invite more.amiable 
and worthier guests to dwell ! 

There shall the Muses, the Graces, and 
the Virtues fix their abode ; for everything 
that is great and tvorthy in human conduct 
must have been conceived in the imagina- 
tion before it was brought into act. And 
many great and good designs have been 
formed there, which, for want of power and 
opportunity, have proved abortive. 

The man whose imagination is occupied 
by these guests, must be wise ; he must be 
good ; and he must be happy. [431] 

[429-431] 



CHAP. I.] 



OF GENERAL WORDS. 



389 



ESSAY V. 

OF ABSTRACTION. 



CHAPTER I. 



OF GENERAL WORDS. 



The words we use in language are either 
general words or proper names. Proper 
names are intended to signify one individual 
only. Such are the names of men, king- 
doms, provinces, cities, rivers, and of every 
other creature of God, or work of man, 
which we choose to distinguish from all 
others of the kind, by a name appropriated 
to it. All the other words of language are 
general words, not appropriated to signify 
any one individual thing, but equally related 
to many. 

Under general words, therefore, I com- 
prehend not only those which logicians call 
general terms — that is, such general words 
as may make the subject or the predicate 
of a proposition, but likewise their auxiliaries 
or accessories, as the learned Mr Harris 
calls them ; such as prepositions, conjunc- 
tions, articles, which are* all general words, 
though they cannot properly be called gene- 
ral terms. 

In every language, rude or polished, 
general words make the greatest part, and 
proper names the least. Grammarians 
have reduced all words to eight or nine 
classes, which are called parts of speech. 
Of these there is only one — to wit, that of 
nouns — wherein proper names are found. 
[432] All pronouns, verbs, participles, ad- 
verbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and 
interjections, are general words. Of nouns, 
all adjectives are general words, and the 
greater part of substantives. Every sub- 
stantive that has a plural number, is a gene- 
ral word ; for no proper name can have a 
plural number, because it signifies only one 
individual. In all the fifteen books of 
Euclid's Elements, there is not one word 
that is not general ; and the same may be 
said of many large volumes. 

At the same time, it must be acknowledged, 
that all the objects we perceive are individ- 
uals. Every object of sense, of memory, 
or of consciousness, is an individual object. 
All the good things we enjoy or desire, and 
all the evils we feel or fear, must come from 
individuals ; and I think we may venture to 
say, that every creature which God has made, 
in the heavens above, or in the earth be- 
[432, 433] 



neath, or in the waters under the earth, is 
an individual.* 

How comes it to pass, then, that, in all 
languages, general words make the greatest 
part of the language, and proper names but 
a very small and inconsiderable part of it. 

This seemingly strange phaenomenon may, 
I think, be easily accounted for by the fol- 
lowing observations : — 

First, Though there be a few individuals 
that are obvious to the notice of all men, 
and, therefore, have proper names in all 
languages — such as the sun and moon, the 
earth and sea — yet the greatest part of the 
things to which we think fit to give proper 
names, are .local ; known perhaps to a vil- 
lage or to a neighbourhood, but unknown to 
the greater part of those who speak the 
same language, and to all the rest of man- 
kind. The names of such things being con- 
fined to a corner, and having no names 
answering to them in other languages, are 
not accounted a part of the language, any 
more than the customs of a particular ham- 
let are accounted part of the law of the 
nation. [433] 

For this reason, there are but few proper 
names that belong to a language. It is 
next to be considered why there must be 
many general words in every language. 

Secondly, It may be observed, that every 
individual object that falls within our view 
has various attributes ; and it is by them 
that it becomes useful or hurtful to us. 
We know not the essence of any individual 
object ; all the knowledge we can attain of 
it, is the knowledge of its attributes — its 
quantity, its various qualities, its various 
relations to other things, its place, its 
situation, and motions. It is by such attri- 
butes of things only that we can communi- 
cate our knowledge of them to others. By 
their attributes, our hopes or fears for them 
are regulated ; and it is only by attention 
to their attributes that we can make them 
subservient to our ends ; and therefore we 
give names to such attributes. 

Now, all attributes must, from their 
nature, be expressed by general words, and 
are so expressed in all languages. In the 
ancient philosophy, attributes in general 
were called by two names which express 



* This Boethius.has well expressed :- 
est, eo quod est, singulare est."— -ti. 



Omne quod 



390 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay V 



their nature. They were called universals, 
because they might belong equally to many 
individuals, and are not confined to one. 
They were also called predicables, because 
whatever is predicated, that is, affirmed or 
denied of one subject, may be of more, and 
therefore is an universal, and expressed by 
a general word. A predicable therefore 
signifies the same thing as an attribute, with 
this difference only, that the first is Latin, 
the last English.* The attributes we find 
either in the creatures of God or in the 
works of men, are common to many indi- 
duals. We either find it to be so, or pre- 
sume it may be so, and give them the same 
name in every subject to which they belong. 

There are not only attributes belonging 
to individual subjects, but there are likewise 
attributes of attributes, which may be called 
secondary attributes. Most attributes are 
capable of different degrees and different 
modifications, which must be expressed by 
general words. [434] 

Thus it is an attribute of many bodies to 
De moved ; but motion may be in an endless 
variety of directions. It may be quick or 
slow, rectilineal or curvilineal ; it may be 
equable, or accelerated, or retarded. 

As all attributes, therefore, whether pri- 
mary or secondary, are expressed by general 
words, it follows that, in every proposition 
we express in language, what is affirmed or 
denied of the subject of the proposition must 
be expressed by general words : and that 
the subject of the proposition may often be 
a general word, will appear from the next 
observation. 

Thirdly, The same faculties by which we 
distinguish the different attributes belong- 
ing to the same subject, and give names 
to them, enable us likewise to observe, 
that many subjects agree in certain attri- 
butes while they differ in others. By this 
means we are enabled to reduce individuals 
which are infinite, to a limited number of 
classes, which are called kinds and sorts ; 
and, in the scholastic language, genera and 
species. 

Observing many individuals to agree in 
certain attributes, we refer them all to one 
class, and give a name to the class. This 
name comprehends in its signification not 
one attribute only, but all the attributes 
which distinguish that class; and by affirm- 
ing this name of any individual, we affirm 
it to have all the attributes which charac- 
terise the class : thus men, dogs, horses, 
elephants, are so many different classes of 
animals. In like manner we marshal other 
substances, vegetable and inanimate, into 



* They are both Latin, or both English. The only 
difference is, that the one i9 of technical, the other 
of popular application, and that the former expresses 
as potential what the latter does as actual.— H. 



Nor is it only substances that we thus 
form into classes. We do the same with 
regard to qualities, relations, actions, affec- 
tions, passions, and all other things. 

When a class is very large, it is divided 
into subordinate classes in the same man- 
ner. [435] The higher class is called a 
genus or kind : the lower a species or sort 
of the higher. Sometimes a species is still 
subdivided into subordinate species ; and 
this subdivision is carried on as far as is 
found convenient for the purpose of language, 
or for the improvement of knowledge. 

In this distribution of things into genera 
and species, it is evident that the name of 
the species comprehends more attributes 
than the name of the genus. The species 
comprehends all that is in the genus, and 
those attributes likewise which distinguish 
that species from others belonging to the 
same genus ; and the more subdivisions we 
make, the names of the lower become still 
the more comprehensive in their significa- 
tion, but the less extensive in their appli- 
cation to individuals. 

Hence it is an axiom in logic — that the 
more extensive any general term is, it is the 
less comprehensive ; and, on the contrary, 
the more comprehensive, the less extensive. 
Thus, in the following series of subordinate 
general terms — Animal — Man — French- 
man — Parisian, every subsequent term com- 
prehends in its signification all that is in 
the preceding, and something more ; and 
every antecedent term extends to more 
individuals than the subsequent. 

Such divisions and subdivisions of things 
into genera and spec'es with general names, 
are not confined to the learned and polished 
languages ; they are found in those of the 
rudest tribes of mankind. From which we 
learn, that the invention and the use of 
general words, both to signify the attributes 
of things, and to signify the genera and 
species of things, is not a subtile invention 
of philosophers, but an operation which all 
men perform by the light of common sense. 
Philosophers may speculate about this ope- 
ration, and reduce it to canons and aphor- 
isms ; but men of common understanding, 
without knowing anything of the philosophy 
of it, can put it in practice, in like manner 
as they can. see objects, and make good use 
of their eyes, although they know nothing 
of the structure of the eye, or of the theory 
of vision. [436] 

Every genus, and every species of things, 
may be either the subject or the predicate 
of a proposition — nay, of innumerable pro- 
positions ; for every attribute common to 
the genus or species may be affirmed of it ; 
and the genus may be affirmed of every 
species, and both genus and species of every 
individual to which it extends. 

Thus, of man it may be affirmed, that he 
[4-34-436] 



II.] 



OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS. 



391 



is an animal made up of body and mind ; 
that he is of few days, and full of trouble ; 
that he is capable of various improvements 
in arts, in knowledge, and in virtue. In a 
word, everything common to the species 
may be affirmed of man ; and of all such 
propositions, which are innumerable, man 
is the subject. 

Again, of every nation and tribe, and of 
every individual of the human race that is, 
or was, or shall be, it may be affirmed that 
they are men. In all such propositions, 
which are innumerable, man is the predi- 
cate of the proposition. 

We observed above an extension and a 
comprehension in general terms ; and that, 
in any subdivision of things, the name of 
the lowest species is most comprehensive, 
and that of the highest genus most exten- 
sive. I would now observe, that, by means 
of such general terms, there is also an ex- 
tension and comprehension of propositions, 
which is one of the noblest powers of lan- 
guage, and fits it for expressing, with great 
ease and expedition, the highest attainments 
in knowledge, of which the human under- 
standing is capable. 

When the predicate is a genus or a species, 
the proposition is more or less comprehen- 
sive, according as the predicate is. Thus, 
when I say that this seal is gold, by this 
single proposition I affirm of it all the pro- 
perties which that metal is known to have. 
When I say of any man that he is a 
mathematician, this appellation compre- 
hends all the attributes that belong to 
him as an animal, as a man, and as one 
who has studied mathematics. When I 
say that the orbit of the planet Mercury 
is an ellipsis, I thereby affirm of that 
orbit all the properties which Apollonius 
and other geometricians have discovered, 
or may discover, of that species of figure. 
[437] 

Again, when the subject of a proposition 
is a genus or a species, the proposition is 
more or less extensive, according as the 
subject is. Thus, when I am taught that 
the three angles of a plane triangle are 
equal to two right angles, this properly ex- 
tends to every species of plane triangle, and 
to every individual plane triangle that did, 
or does, or can exist. 

It is by means of such extensive and 
comprehensive propositions, that human 
knowledge is condensed, as it were, into a 
size adapted to the capacity of the human 
mind, with great addition to its beauty, 
and without any diminution of its distinct- 
ness and perspicuity. 

General propositions in science may be 
compared to the seed of a plant, which, 
according to some philosophers, has not 
only the whole future plant inclosed within 
it, but the seeds of that plant, and the plants 
[437-439] 



that shall spring from them through all 
future generations. 

But the similitude falls short in this re- 
spect, that time and accidents, not in our 
power, must concur to disclose the contents 
of the seed, and bring them into our view ; 
whereas the contents of a general proposi- 
tion may be brought forth, ripened, and 
exposed to view at our pleasure, and in an 
instant. 

Thus the wisdom of ages, and the most 
sublime theorems of science, may be laid 
up, like an Iliad in a nut-shell, and trans- 
mitted to future generations. And this 
noble purpose of language can only be ac- 
complished by means of general words 
annexed to the divisions and subdivisions of 
things. [438] 

What has been said in this chapter, I 
think, is sufficient to shew that there can be 
no language, not so much as a single pro- 
position, without general words ; that they 
must make the greatest part of every lan- 
guage ; and that it is by them only that 
language is fitted to express, with wonder- 
ful ease and expedition, all the treasures 
of human wisdom and knowledge. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS. 

As general words are so necessary in 
language, it is natural to conclude that there 
must be general conceptions, of which they 
are the signs. 

Words are empty sounds when they do 
not signify the thoughts of the speaker ; 
and it is only from their signification that 
they are denominated gen( \d. Every word 
that is spoken, considered merely as a sound, 
is an individual sound. And it can only be 
called a general word, because that which it 
signifies is general. Now, that which it 
signifies, is conceived by the mind both of 
the speaker and hearer, if the word have a 
distinct meaning, and be distinctly under- 
stood. It is, therefore, impossible that 
words can have a general signification, un- 
less there be conceptions in the mind of 
the speaker and of the hearer, of things 
that are general. It is to such that I give 
the name of general conceptions ; and it 
ought to be observed, that they take this 
denomination, not from the act of the mind 
in conceiving, which is an individual act, 
but from the object or thing conceived, 
which is general. 

We are, therefore, here to consider 
whether we have such general conceptions, 
and how they are formed. [439] 

To begin with the conceptions expressed 
by general terms— that is, by such general 
words as may be the subject or the predi- 



392 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



cate of a proposition. They are either 
attributes of things, or they are genera or 
species of things. 

It is evident, with respect to all the indi- 
viduals we are acquainted with that we have 
a more clear and distinct conception of their 
attributes than of the subject to which those 
attributes belong. 

Take, for instance, any individual body 
we have access to know — what conception do 
we form of it ? Every man may know this 
from his consciousness. He will find that 
he conceives it as a thing that has length, 
breadth, and thickness, such a figure and 
such a colour ; that it is hard, or soft, or 
fluid ; that it has such qualities, and is fit 
for such purposes. If it is a vegetable, he 
may know where it grew, what is the form 
of its leaves, and flower, and seed. If an 
animal, what are its natural instincts, its 
manner of life, and of rearing its young. 
Of these attributes, belonging to this indi- 
vidual and numberless others, he may 
surely have a distinct conception ; and he 
will find words in language by which he can 
clearly and distinctly express each of them. 

If we consider, in like manner, the con- 
ception we form of any individual person of 
our acquaintance, we shall find it to be made 
up of various attributes, which we ascribe to 
him ; such as, that he is the son of such a 
man, the brother of such another ; that he 
has such an employment or office ; has such 
a fortune ; that he is tall or short, well or 
ill made, comely or ill favoured, young or 
old, married or unmarried ; to this we may 
add his temper, his character, his abilities, 
and perhaps some anecdotes of his history. 

Such is the conception we form of indi- 
vidual persons of our acquaintance. By 
such attributes we describe them to those 
who know them not ; and by such attri- 
butes historians give us a conception of the 
personages of former times. Nor is it pos- 
sible to do it in any other way. [440] 

All the distinct knowledge we have or 
can attain of any individual is the know- 
ledge of its attributes; for we know not 
the essence of any individual. This seems 
to be beyond the reach of the human facul- 
ties. 

Now, every attribute is what the ancients 
called an universal. It is, or may be, com- 
mon to various individuals. There is no 
attribute belonging to any creature of God 
which may not belong to others ; and, on 
this account, attributes, in all languages, are 
expressed by general words. 

It appears, likewise, from every man's 
experience, that he may have as clear and 
distinct a conception of such attributes as 
we have named, and of innumerable others, 
as he can have of any individual to which 
they belong. 

Indeed, the attributes of individuals is all 



that we distinctly conceive about them. It 
is true, we conceive a subject to which the 
attributes belong ; but of this subject, when 
its attributes are set aside, we have but an 
obscure and relative* conception, whether it 
be body or mind. 

This was before observed with regard to 
bodies, Essay II. chap. 19, [p. 322] to 
which we refer ; and it is no less evident 
with regard to minds. What is it we call a 
mind ? It is a "thinking, intelligent, active 
being. Granting that thinking, intelli- 
gence, and activity, are attributes of mind, 
I want to know what the thing or being is 
to whieh these attributes belong ? To this 
question I can find no satisfying answer. 
The attributes of mind, and particularly its 
operations, we know clearly ; but of the 
thing itself we have only an obscure no- 
tion. [441] 

Nature teaches us that thinking and 
reasoning are attributes, which cannot exist 
without a subject ; but of that subject I be- 
lieve the best notion we can form implies 
little more than that it is the subject of such 
attributes. 

Whether other created beings may have 
the knowledge of the real essence of created 
things, so as to be able to deduce their at- 
tributes from their essence and constitution, 
or whether this be the prerogative of him 
who made them, we cannot tell ; but it is 
a knowledge which seems to be quite be- 
yond the reach of the human faculties. 

We know the essence of a triangle, and 
from that essence can deduce its properties. 
It is an universal, and might have been 
conceived by the human mind though no 
individual triangle had ever existed. It has 
only what Mr Locke calls a nominal essence, 
which is expressed in its definition. But 
everything that exists has a real essence, 
which is above our comprehension ; and, 
therefore, we cannot deduce its properties 
or attributes from its nature, as we do in 
the triangle. We must take a contrary 
road in the knowledge of God's works, and 
satisfy ourselves with their attributes as 
facts, and with the general conviction that 
there is a subject to which those attributes 
belong. 

Enough, I think, has been said, to shew, 
not only that we may have clear and dis- 
tinct conceptions of attributes, but that 
they are the only things, with regard to 
individuals, of which we have a clear and 
distinct conception. 

The other class of general terms are those 
that signify the genera and species into 
which we divide and subdivide things. And, 
if we be able to form distinct conceptions of 
attributes, it cannot surely be denied that 
we may have distinct conceptions of genera 



* Sec above, p. 322, note.— H. 

[140, 441] 



II.] 



OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS. 



393 



and species ; because they are only collec- 
tions of attributes which we conceive to 
exist in a subject, and to which we give a 
general name. [442] If the attributes 
comprehended under that general name be 
distinctly conceived, the thing meant by the 
name must be distinctly conceived. And 
the name may justly be attributed to every 
individual which has those attributes. 

Thus, I conceive distinctly what it is to 
have wings, to be covered with feathers, to 
lay eggs. Suppose then that we give the 
name of bird to every animal that has these 
three attributes. Here undoubtedly my 
conception of a bird is as distinct as my 
notion of the attributes which are common 
to this species : and, if this be admitted to 
be the definition of a bird, there is nothing 
I conceive more distinctly. If I had never 
seen a bird, and can but be made to under- 
stand the definition, I can easily apply it to 
every individual of the species, without 
danger of mistake. 

When things are divided and subdivided 
by men of science, and names given to the 
genera and species, those names are defined. 
Thus, the genera and species of plants, and 
of other natural bodies, are accurately de- 
fined by the writers in the various branches 
of natural history; so that, to all future 
generations, the definition will convey a dis- 
tinct notion of the genus or species defined. 

There are, without doubt, many words 
signifying genera and species of things, 
which have a meaning somewhat vague and 
indistinct ; so that those who speak the 
same language do not always use them in 
the same sense. But, if we attend to the 
cause of this indistinctness, we shall find 
that it is not owing to their being general 
terms, but to this, that there is no defini- 
tion of them that has authority. Their 
meaning, therefore, has not been learned 
by a definition, but by a kind of induction, 
by observing to what individuals they are 
applied by those who understand the lan- 
guage. We learn by habit to use them as 
we see others do, even when we have not a 
precise meaning annexed to them. A-man 
may know that to certain individuals they 
may be applied with propriety ; but whether 
they can be applied to certain other indivi- 
duals, he may be uncertain, either from 
want of good authorities, or from having 
contrary authorities, which leave him in 
doubt. [443] 

Thus, a man may know that, when he 
applies the name of beast to a lion or a 
tiger, and the name of bird to an eagle or 
a turkey, he speaks properly. But whether 
a bat be a bird or a beast, he may be uncer- 
tain. If there was any accurate definition 
of a beast and of a bird, that was of suffi- 
cient authority, he could be at no loss. 

It is said to have been sometimes a mat- 
[412-444] 



ter of dispute, with regard to a monstrous 
birth of a woman, whether it was a man or 
not. Although this be, in reality, a ques- 
tion about the meaning of a word, it may 
be of importance, on account of the privi- 
leges which laws have annexed to the human 
character. To make such laws perfectly 
precise, the definition of a man would, be 
necessary, which I believe legislators have 
seldom or never thought fit to give. It is, 
indeed, very difficult to fix a definition of 
so common a word ; and the cases wherein 
it would be of any use so rarely occur, that 
perhaps it may be better, when they do 
occur, to leave them to the determination 
of a judge or of a jury, than to give a defi- 
nition, which might be attended with un- 
foreseen consequences. 

A genus or species, being a collection of 
attributes conceived to exist in one subject, 
a definition is the only way to prevent any 
addition or diminution of its ingredients in 
the conception of different persons ; and 
when there is no definition that can be 
appealed to as a standard, the name will 
hardly retain the most perfect precision in 
its signification. 

From what has been said, I conceive it 
is evident that the words which signify 
genera and species of things have often as 
precise and definite a signification as any 
words whatsoever ; and that, when it is 
otherwise, their want of precision is not 
owing to their being general words, but to 
other causes. [444] 

Having shewn that we may have a per- 
fectly clear and distinct conception of the 
meaning of general terms, we may, I think, 
take it for granted, that the same may be 
said of other general words, such as prepo- 
sitions, conjunctions, articles. My design 
at present being only to shew that we have 
general conceptions no less clear and dis- 
tinct than those of individuals, it is sufficient 
for this purpose, if this appears with regard 
to the conceptions expressed by general 
terms. To conceive the meaning of a 
general word, and to conceive that which it 
signifies, is the same thing. We conceive 
distinctly the meaning of general terms, 
therefore we conceive distinctly that which 
they signify. But such terms do not sig- 
nify any individual, but what is common to 
many individuals ; therefore, we have a 
distinct conception of things common to 
many individuals — that is, we have distinct 
general conceptions. 

We must here beware of the ambiguity 
of the word conception, which sometimes 
signifies the act of the mind in conceiving, 
sometimes the thing conceived, which is the 
object of that act.* If the word be taken 



*'This iast should be called Concept, which was a 
term in use with the old English philosophers.— H. 



394 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay v. 



in the first sense, I acknowledge that every 
act of the mind is an individual act ; the 
universality, therefore, is not in the act of 
the mind, but in the object or thing con- 
ceived. The thing conceived is an attri- 
bute common to many subjects, or it is a 
genus or species common to many indivi- 
duals. 

Suppose I conceive a triangle — that is, a 
plain figure, terminated by three right 
lines. He that understands this definition 
distinctly, has a distinct conception of a 
triangle. But a triangle is not an indivi- 
dual ; it is a species. The act of my under- 
standing in conceiving it is an individual 
act, and has a real existence ; but the thing 
conceived is general, and cannot exist with- 
out other attributes, which are not included 
in the definition. [445] 

Every triangle that really exists must 
have a certain length of sides and measure 
of angles ; it must have place and time. 
But the definition of a triangle includes 
neither existence nor any of those attri- 
butes ; and, therefore, they are not included 
in the conception of a triangle, which can- 
not be accurate if it comprehend more than 
the definition. 

Thus, I think, it appears to be evident, 
that we have general conceptions that are 
clear and distinct, both of attributes of 
things, and of genera and species of things. 



CHAPTER III. 

OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS FORMED BY 
ANALYSING OBJECTS. 

We are next to consider the operations 
of the understanding, by which we are 
enabled to form general conceptions. 

These appear to me to be three : — First, 
The resolving or analysing a subject into 
its known attributes, and giving a name to 
each attribute, which name shall signify 
that attribute, and nothing more. 

Secondly, The observing one or more 
such attributes to be common to many sub- 
jects. The first is by philosophers called 
abstraction ; the second may be called 
generalising ; but both are commonly in- 
cluded under the name of abstraction. 

It is difficult to say which of them goes 
first, or whether they are not so closely 
connected that neither can claim the prece- 
dence. For, on the one hand, to perceive an 
agreement between two or more objects in 
the same attribute, seems to require no- 
thing more than to compare them together. 
[446] A savage, upon seeing snow and 
chalk, would find no difficulty in perceiv- 
ing that they have the same colour. Yet, 
on the other hand, it seems impossible that 
he should observe this agreement without 



abstraction — that is, distinguishing in his 
conception the colour, wherein those two 
objects agree, from the other qualities 
wherein they disagree. 

It seems, therefore, that we cannot 
generalise without some degree of abstrac- 
tion ; but I apprehend we may abstract 
without generalising. For what hinders 
me from attending to the whiteness of the 
paper before me, without applying that 
colour to any other object. The whiteness 
of this individual object is an abstract con- 
ception, but not a general one, while applied 
to one individual only. These two opera- 
tions, however, are subservient to each 
other ; for the more attributes we observe 
and distinguish in any one individual, the 
more agreements we shall discover between 
it and other individuals. 

A third operation of the understanding, 
by which we form abstract conceptions, is 
the combining into one whole a certain 
number of those attributes of which we 
have formed abstract notions, and giving a 
name to that combination. It is thus we 
form abstract notions of the genera and 
species of things. These three operations 
we shall consider in order. 

With regard to abstraction, strictly so 
called, I can perceive nothing in it that is 
difficult either to be understood or practised. 
What can be more easy than to distinguish 
the different attributes which we know to 
belong to a subject ? In a man, for in- 
stance, to distinguish his size, his com- 
plexion, his age, his fortune, his birth, his 
profession, and twenty other things that 
belong to him. To think and speak of 
these things with understanding, is surely 
within the reach of every man endowed 
with the human faculties. [447] 

There may be distinctions that require 
nice discernment, or an acquaintance with 
the subject that is not common. Thus, a 
critic in painting may discern the style of 
Raphael or Titian, when another man 
could not. A lawyer may be acquainted 
with many distinctions in crimes, and con- 
tracts, and actions, which never occurred 
to a man who has not studied law. One 
man may excel another in the talent of dis- 
tinguishing, as he may in memory or in 
reasoning ; but there is a certain degree of 
this talent, without which a man would 
have no title to be considered as a reason- 
able creature. 

It ought likewise to be observed, that 
attributes may, with perfect ease, be dis- 
tinguished and disjoined in our conception, 
which cannot be actually separated in the 
subject. Thus, in a body, I can distinguish 
its solidity from its extension, and its weight 
from both. In extension I can distinguish 
length, breadth, and thickness ; yet none of 
these can be separated from the body, or 
[445-447] 



chap, in.] CONCEPTIONS FORMED BY ANALYSING OBJECTS. 395 



from one another. There may be attri- 
butes belonging to a subject, and inseparable 
from it, of which we have no knowledge, 
and consequently no conception ; but this 
does not hinder our conceiving distinctly 
those of its attributes which we know. 

Thus, all the properties of a circle are 
inseparable from the nature of a circle, 
and may be demonstrated from its defini- 
tion ; yet a man may have a perfectly 
distinct notion of a circle, who knows very 
few of those properties of it which mathe- 
maticians have demonstrated ; and a circle 
probably has many properties which no 
mathematician ever dreamed of. 

It is therefore certain that attributes, 
which in their nature are absolutely inse- 
parable from their subject and from one 
another, may be disjoined in our conception ; 
one cannot exist without the other, but one 
can be conceived without the other. 

Having considered abstraction, strictly 
so called, let us next consider the operation 
of generalising, which is nothing but the 
observing one or more attributes to be 
common to many subjects. [448] 

If any man can doubt whether there be 
attributes that are really common to many 
individuals, let him consider whether there 
be not many men that are above six feet 
high, and many below it; whether there 
be not many men that are rich, and many 
more that are poor ; whether there be not 
many that were born in Britain, and many 
that were born in France. To multiply 
instances of this kind, would be to affront the 
reader's understanding. It is certain, there- 
fore, that there are innumerable attributes 
that are really common to many individuals ; 
and if this be what the schoolmen called 
universale a parte rei, we may affirm with 
certainty that there are such universals. 

There are some attributes expressed by 
general words, of which this may seem more 
doubtful. Such are the qualities which are 
inherent in their several subjects. It may 
be said that every subject hath its own 
qualities, and that which is the quality of 
one subject cannot be the quality of another 
subject. Thus the whiteness of the sheet 
of paper upon which I write, cannot be the 
whiteness of another sheet, though both are 
called white. The weight of one guinea is 
not the weight of another guinea, though 
both are said to have the same weight. 

To this I answer, that the whiteness of 
this sheet is one thing, whiteness is another ; 
the conceptions signified by these two forms 
of speech are as different as the expressions. 
The first signifies an individual quality 
really existing, and is not a general con- 
ception, though it be an abstract one : the 
second signifies a general conception, which 
implies no existence, but may be predicated 
of everything that is white, and in the 
[MP-4>,n] 



same sense. On this account, if one should 
say that the whiteness of this sheet is the 
whiteness of another sheet, every man per- 
ceives this to be absurd ; but when he says 
both sheets are white, this is true and per- 
fectly understood. The conception of white- 
ness implies no existence ; it would remain 
the same though everything in the universe 
that is white were annihilated. [449] 

It appears, therefore, that the general 
names of qualities, as well as of other at- 
tributes, are applicable to many individuals 
in the same sense, which cannot be if there 
be not general conceptions signified by such 
names. 

If it should be asked, how early, or at 
what period of life men begin to form general 
conceptions ? I answer, As soon as a child 
can say, with understanding, that he has 
two brothers or two sisters — as soon as he 
can use the plural number — he must have 
general conceptions ; for no individual can 
have a plural number. 

As there are not two individuals in nature 
that agree in everything, so there are very 
few that do not agree in some things. We 
take pleasure from very early years in ob- 
serving such agreements. One great branch 
of what we call wit, which, when innocent, 
gives pleasure to every good-natured man, 
consists in discovering unexpected agree- 
ments in things. The author of Hudibras 
could discern a property common to the 
morning and a boiled lobster — that both 
turn from black to red. Swift could see 
something common to wit and an old cheese, 
Such unexpected agreements may shew wit ; 
but there are innumerable agreements of 
things which cannot escape the notice of 
the lowest understanding ; such as agree- 
ments in colour, magnitude, figure, features, 
time, place, age, and so forth. These agree- 
ments are the foundation of so many com- 
mon attributes, which are found in the 
rudest languages. 

The ancient philosophers called these 
universals, or predicables, and endeavoured 
to reduce them to five classes — to wit, 
Genus, Species, Specific Difference, Pro- 
perties, and Accidents. Perhaps there may 
be more classes of universals or attributes — 
for enumerations, so very general, are s sel- 
dom complete : but every attribute, common 
to several individuals, may be expressed by 
a general term, which is the sign of a 
general conception. [450] 

How prone men are to form general con- 
ceptions we may see from the use of meta- 
phor, and of the other figures of speech 
grounded on similitude. Similitude is no- 
thing else than an agreement of the objects 
compared in one or more attributes , and 
if there be no attribute common to both, 
there can be no similitude. 

The similitudes and analogies between 



396 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



Q ESSAY V. 



the various objects that nature presents to 
us, are infinite and inexhaustible. They 
not only please, when displayed by the poet 
or wit in works of taste, but they are highly 
useful in the ordinary communication of our 
thoughts and sentiments by language. In 
the rude languages of barbarous nations, 
similitudes and analogies supply the want of 
proper words to express men's sentiments, 
so much that in such languages there is 
hardly a sentence without a metaphor ; and, 
if we examine the most copious and polished 
languages, we shall* find that a great pro- 
portion of the words and phrases which are 
accounted the most proper, may be said to 
be the progeny of metaphor. 

As foreigners, who settle in a nation as 
their home, come at last to be incorporated 
and lose the denomination of foreigners, so 
words and phrases, at first borrowed and 
figurative, by long use become denizens in 
the language, and lose the denomination of 
figures of speech. When we speak of the 
extent of knowledge, the steadiness of virtue, 
the tenderness of affection, the perspicuity 
of expression, no man conceives these to be 
metaphorical expressions ; they are as pro- 
per as any in the language : yet it appears 
upon the very face of them, that they 
must have been metaphorical in those who 
vised them first ; and that it is by use and 
prescription that they have lost the deno- 
mination of figurative, and acquired a right 
to be considered as proper words. This 
observation will be found to extend to a 
great part, perhaps the greatest part of the 
words of the most perfect languages. Some- 
times the name of an individual is given to 
a general conception, and thereby the in- 
dividual in a manner generalised ; as when 
the Jew Shy lock, in Shakespeare, says — 
" A Daniel come to judgment ; yea, a 
Daniel !" In this speech, " a Daniel" is 
an attribute, or an universal. The character 
of Daniel, as a man of singular wisdom, 
is abstracted from his person, and considered 
as capable of being attributed to other per- 
sons. [451] 

Upon the whole, these two operations of 
abstracting and generalising appear com- 
mon to all men that have understanding. 
The practice of them is, and must be, fami- 
liar to every man that uses language ; but 
it is one thing to practise them, and another 
to explain how they are performed ; as it is 
one thing to see, another to explain how we 
see. The first is the province of all men, 
and is the natural and easy operation of the 
faculties which God hath given us. The 
second is the province of philosophers, and, 
though a matter of no great difficulty in it- 
self, has been much perplexed by the ambi- 
guity of words, and still more by the 
hypotheses of philosophers. 

Thus, when I consider a billiard ball, 



its colour is one attribute, which I signify 
by calling it white ; its figure is another, 
which is signified by calling it spherical , 
the firm cohesion of its parts is signified by 
calling it hard ; its recoiling, when it strikes 
a hard body, is signified by its being called 
elastic ; its origin, as being part of the tooth 
of an elephant, is signified by calling it 
ivory ; and its use by calling it a billiard ball. 

The words by which each of those attri- 
butes is signified, have one distinct meaning, 
and in this meaning are applicable to many 
individuals. They signify not any indivi- 
dual thing, but attributes common to many 
individuals ; nor is it beyond the capacity 
of a child to understand them perfectly, and 
to apply them properly to every individual 
in which they are found. 

As it is by analysing a complex object 
into its several attributes that we acquire 
our simplest abstract conceptions, it may be 
proper to compare this analysis with that 
which a chemist makes of a compounded 
body into the ingredients which enter into 
its composition ; for, although there be such 
an analogy between these two operations, 
that we give to both the name of analysis 
or resolution, there is, at the same time, so 
great a dissimilitude in some respects, that 
we may be led into error, by applying to one 
what belongs to the other. [452] 

It is obvious that the chemical analysis 
is an operation of the hand upon matter, 
by various material instruments. The an- 
alysis we are now explaining, is purely an 
operation of the understanding, which re- 
quires no material instrument, nor produces 
any change upon any external thing ; we 
shall, therefore, call it the intellectual or 
mental analysis. 

In the chemical analysis, the compound 
body itself is the subject analysed. A sub- 
ject so imperfectly known that it may be 
compounded of various ingredients, when 
to our senses it appears perfectly simple ;* 
and even when we are able to analyse it 
into the different ingredients of which it is 
composed, we know not how or why the 
combination of those ingredients produces 
such a body. 

Thus, pure sea-salt is a body, to appear- 
ance as simple as any in nature. Every the 
least particle of it, discernible by our senses, 
is perfectly similar to every other particle in 
all its qualities. The nicest taste, the quick- 
est eye, can discern no mark of its being 
made up of different ingredients; yet, by 
the chemical art, it can be analysed into an 
acid and an alkali, and can be again pro- 
duced by the combination of those two in- 
gredients. But how this combination pro- 
duces sea-salt, no man has been able to dis- 
cover. The ingredients are both as unlike 

* Something seems wanting in this clause.— H. 

[451 **2] 



chap, in.] CONCEPTIONS FORMED BY ANALYSING OBJECTS 397 



the compound as any bodies we know. No 
man could have guessed, before the thing 
was known, that sea-salt is compounded of 
those two ingredients ; no man could have 
guessed that the union of those two ingre- 
dients should produce such a compound as 
sea-salt. Such, in many cases, are the 
phsenomena of the chemical analysis of a 
compound body. [453] 

If we consider the intellectual analysis of 
an object, it is evident that nothing of this 
kind can happen ; because the thing ana- 
lysed is not an external object imperfectly 
known ; it is a conception of the mind it- 
self. And, to suppose that there can be 
anything in a conception that is not con- 
ceived, is a contradiction. 

The reason of observing this difference 
between those two kinds of analysis is, that 
some philosophers, in order to support their 
systems, have maintained that a complex 
idea may have the appearance of the most 
perfect simplicity, and retain no similitude 
of any of the simple ideas of which it is 
compounded ; just as a white colour may 
appear perfectly simple, and retain no 
similitude to any of the seven primary 
colours of which it is compounded ; or as a 
chemical composition may appear perfectly 
simple, and retain no similitude to any of 
the ingredients. 

From which those philosophers have drawn 
this important conclusion, that a cluster of 
the ideas of sense, properly combined, may 
make the idea of a mind ; and that all the 
ideas which Mr Locke calls ideas of re- 
flection, are only compositions of the ideas 
which we have by our five senses. From 
this the transition is easy, that, if a proper 
composition of the ideas of matter may 
make the idea of a mind, then a proper 
composition of matter itself may make a 
mind, and that man is only a piece of 
matter curiously formed. 

In this curious system, the whole fabric 
rests upon this foundation, that a complex 
idea, which is made up of various simple 
ideas, may appear to be perfectly simple, 
and to have no marks of composition, be- 
cause a compound body may appear to our 
senses to be perfectly simple. 

Upon this fundamental proposition of 
this system I beg leave to make two re- 
marks. [454] 

1. Supposing it to be true, it affirms only 
what may be. We are, indeed, in most 
cases very imperfect judges of what may 
be. But this we know, that, were we ever 
so certain that a thing may be, this is no 
good reason for believing that it really is. 
A may -be is a mere hypothesis, which may 
furnish matter of investigation, but is not 
entitled to the least degree of belief. The 
transition from what may be to what really 
is, is familiar and easy to those who have a 
[453-455] 



predilection for a hypothesis ; but to a man 
who seeks truth without prejudice or pre- 
possession, it is a very wide and difficult 
step, and he will never pass from the one 
to the other, without evidence not only that 
the thing may be, but that it really is. 

2. As far as I am able to judge, this, 
which it is said may be, cannot be. That 
a complex idea should be made up of simple 
ideas ; so that to a ripe understanding re- 
flecting upon that idea, there should be no 
appearance of composition, nothing similar 
to the simple ideas of which it is com- 
pounded, seems to me to involve a contra- 
diction. The idea is a conception of the 
mind. If anything more than this is meant 
by the idea, I know not what it is ; and I 
wish both to know what it is, and to have 
proof of its existence. Now, that there 
should be anything in the conception of an 
object which is not conceived, appears to 
me as manifest a contradiction as that 
there should be an existence which does 
not exist, or that a thing should be con- 
ceived and not conceived at the same time. 

But, say these philosophers, a white 
colour is produced by the composition of 
the primary colours, and yet has no resem- 
blance to any of them. I grant it. But 
what can be inferred from this with regard 
to the composition of ideas ? To bring this 
argument home to the point, they must 
say, that because a white colour is com- 
pounded of the primary colours, therefore 
the idea of a white colour is compounded of 
the ideas of the primary colours. This 
reasoning, if it was admitted, would lead 
to innumerable absurdities. An opaque 
fluid may be compounded of two or more 
pellucid fluids. Hence, we might infer, 
with equal force, that the idea of an opaque 
fluid may be compounded of the idea of two 
or more pellucid fluids. [455] 

Nature's way of compounding bodies, 
and our way of compounding ideas, are so 
different in many respects, that we cannot 
reason from the one to the other, unless it 
can be found that ideas are combined by 
fermentations and elective attractions, and 
may be analysed in a furnace by the force 
of fire and of menstruums. Until this dis- 
covery be made, we must hold those to be 
simple ideas, which, upon the most atten- 
tive reflection, have no appearance of com- 
position ; and those only to be the ingre- 
dients of complex ideas, which, by attentive 
reflection, can be perceived to be contained 
in them. 

If the idea of mind and its operations, 
may be compounded of the ideas of matter 
and its qualities, why may not the idea of 
matter be compounded of the ideas of 
mind ? There is the same evidence for the 
last may-be as for the first. And why may 
not the idea of sound be compounded of the 



398 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay v. 



ideas of colour ; or the idea of colour of 
those of sound ? Why may not the idea of 
wisdom be compounded of ideas of folly ; 
or the idea of truth of ideas of absurdity ? 
But we leave these mysterious may-bes to 
them that have faith to receive them. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS FORMED BV COM- 
BINATION. 

As, by an intellectual analysis of objects, 
we form general conceptions of single attri- 
butes, (which, of all conceptions that enter 
into the human mind, are the most simple,) 
so, by combining several of these into one 
parcel, and giving a name to that combina- 
tion, we form general conceptions that may 
be very complex, and, at the same time, 
very distinct. [456] 

Thus, one who, by analysing extended 
objects, has got the simple notions of a 
point, a line, straight or curve, an angle, a 
surface, a solid, can easily conceive a plain 
surface, terminated by four equal straight 
lines, meeting in four points at right angles. 
To this species of figure he gives the name 
of a square. In like manner, he can con- 
ceive a solid terminated by six equal squares, 
and give it the name of a cube. A square, 
a cube, and every name of mathematical 
figure, is a general term, expressing a com- 
plex general conception, made by a certain 
combination of the simple elements into 
which we analyse extended bodies. 

Every mathematical figure is accurately 
defined, by enumerating the simple ele- 
ments of which it is formed, and the man- 
ner of their combination. The definition 
contains the whole essence of it. And 
every property that belongs to it may be 
deduced by demonstrative reasoning from 
its definition. It is not a thing that 
exists, for then it would be an individual ; 
but it is a thing that is conceived without 
regard to existence. 

A farm, a manor, a parish, a county, a 
kingdom, are complex general conceptions, 
formed by various combinations and modi- 
fications of inhabited territory, under cer- 
tain forms of government. 

Different combinations of military men 
form the notions of a company, a regiment, 
an army. 

The several crimes which are the objects 
of criminal law, such as theft, murder, 
robbery, piracy, what are they but certain 
combinations of human actions and inten- 
tions, which are accurately defined in 
criminal law, and which it is found con- 
venient to comprehend under one name, 
and consider as one thing ? 

When we observe that nature, in her 



animal, vegetable, and inanimate produc- 
tions, has formed many individuals that 
agree in many of their qualities and attri- 
butes, we are led by natural instinct to 
expect their agreement in other qualities, 
which we have not had occasion to perceive. 
[457] Thus, a child who has once burnt 
his finger, by putting it in the flame of one 
candle, expects the same event if he puts it 
in the flame of another candle, or in any 
flame, and is thereby led to think that the 
quality of burning belongs to all flame. 
This instinctive induction is not justified 
by the rules of logic, and it sometimes leads 
men into harmless mistakes, which expe- 
rience may afterwards correct ; but it pre- 
serves us from destruction in innumerable 
dangers to which we are exposed. 

The reason of taking notice of this prin- 
ciple in human nature in this place is, that 
the distribution of the productions of na- 
ture into genera and species becomes, on 
account of this principle, more generally 
useful. 

The physician expects that the rhubarb 
which has never yet been tried will have 
like medical virtues with that which he has 
prescribed on former occasions. Two par- 
cels of rhubarb agree in certain sensible 
qualities, from which agreement they are 
both called by the same general name 
rhubarb. Therefore it is expected that 
they will agree in their medical virtues. 
And, as experience has discovered certain 
virtues in one parcel, or in many parcels, 
we presume, without experience, that the 
same virtues belong to all parcels of rhubarb 
that shall be used. 

If a traveller meets a horse, an ox, or a 
sheep, which he never saw before, he is 
under no apprehension, believing these ani- 
mals to be of a species that is tame and in- 
offensive. But he dreads a lion or a tiger, 
because they are of a fierce and ravenous 
species. 

We are capable of receiving innumerable 
advantages, and are exposed to innumer- 
able dangers, from the various productions 
of nature, animal, vegetable, and inanimate. 
The life of man, if an hundred times longer 
than it is, would be insufficient to learn 
from experience the useful and hurtful qua- 
lities of every individual production of na- 
ture taken singly. [458] 

The Author of Nature hath made pro- 
vision for our attaining that knowledge of 
his works which is necessary for our subsist- 
ence and preservation, partly by the consti- 
tution of the productions of nature, and partly 
by the constitution of the human mind. 

For, first, In the productions of nature, 
great numbers of individuals are made so 
like to one another, both in their obvious 
and in their more occult qualities, that we 
are not only enabled, but invited, as it were, 
[456-458/ 



chap, iv.] CONCEPTIONS FORMED BY COMBINATION. 



399 



to reduce them into classes, and to give a 
general name to a class ; a name which is 
common to every individual of the class, 
because it comprehends in its signification 
those qualities or attributes only that are 
common to all the individuals of that class. 

Secondly, The human mind is so framed, 
that, from the agreement of individuals in 
the more obvious qualities by which we 
reduce them into one class, we are naturally 
led to expect that they will be found to 
agree in their more latent qualities — and in 
this we are seldom disappointed. 

We have, therefore, a strong and rational 
inducement, both to distribute natural sub- 
stances into classes, genera and species, 
under general names, and to do this with all 
the accuracy and distinctness we are able. 
For the more accurate our divisions are 
made, and the more distinctly the several 
species are denned, the more securely we 
may rely that the qualities we find in one or 
in a few individuals will be found in all of 
the same species. 

Every species of natural substances which 
has a name in language, is an attribute of 
many individuals, and is itself a combination 
of more simple attributes, which we observe 
to be common to those individuals. [459] 

We shall find a great part of the words 
of every language — nay, I apprehend, the 
far greater part — to signify combinations of 
more simple general conceptions, which 
men have found proper to be bound up, as 
it were, in one parcel, by being designed by 
one name. 

Some general conceptions there are, which 
may more properly be called compositions 
or works than mere combinations. Thus, 
one may conceive a machine which never 
existed. He may conceive an air in music, 
a poem, a plan of architecture, a plan of 
government, a plan of conduct in public or 
in private life, a sentence, a discourse, a 
treatise. Such compositions are things 
conceived in the mind of the author, not 
individuals that really exist ; and the same 
general conception which the author had, 
may be communicated to others by language. 

Thus, the " Oceana" of Harrington was 
conceived in the mind of its author. The 
materials of which it is composed are things 
conceived, not things that existed. His 
senate, his popular assembly, his magis- 
trates, his elections, are all conceptions of 
his mind, and the whole is one complex 
conception. And the same may be said of 
every work of the human understanding. 

Very different from these are the works 
of God, which we behold. They are works 
of creative power, not of understanding 
only. They have a real existence. Our 
best conceptions of them are partial and 
imperfect. But of the works of the -human 
understanding our conception may be per- 
[459-461] 



feet and complete. They are nothing but 
what the author conceived, and what he can 
express by language, so as to convey his 
conception perfectly to men like himself. 

Although such works are indeed complex 
general conceptions, they do not so properly 
belong to our present subject. They are 
more the objects of judgment and of taste, 
than of bare conception or simple appre- 
hension. [460] 

To return, therefore, to those complex 
conceptions which are formed merely by 
combining those that are more simple. 
Nature has given us the power of combin- 
ing such simple attributes, and such a num- 
ber of them as we find proper ; and of 
giving one name to that combination, and 
considering it as one object of thought. 

The simple attributes of things, which 
fall under our observation, are not so nume- 
rous but that they may all have names in a 
copious language. But to give names to 
all the combinations that can be made of 
two, three, or more of them, would be im- 
possible. The most copious languages have 
names but for a very small part. 

It may likewise be observed, that the 
combinations that have names are nearly, 
though not perfectly, the same in the dif- 
ferent languages of civilized nations that 
have intercourse with one another. Hence 
it is, that the Lexicographer, for the most 
part, can give words in one language answer- 
ing perfectly, or very nearly, to those of 
another ; and what is written in a simple 
style in one language, can be translated al- 
most word for word into another. • 

From these observations we may con- 
clude that there are either certain common 
principles of human nature, or certain com- 
mon occurrences of human life, which dis- 
pose men, out of an infinite number that 
might be formed, to form certain combina- 
tions rather than others. 

Mr Hume, in order to account for this 
phenomenon, has recourse to what he calls 
the associating qualities of ideas ; to wit, 
causation, contiguity in time and place, and 
similitude. He conceives — "That one of 
the most remarkable effects of those associa- 
ting qualities, is the complex ideas which 
are the common subjects of our thoughts. 
That this also is the cause why languages 
so nearly correspond to one another; Nature 
in a manner pointing out to every one those 
ideas which are most proper to be united 
into a complex one." [461] 

I agree with this ingenious author, that 
Nature in a manner points out those simple 
ideas which are most proper to be united 
into a complex one : but Nature does this, 
not solely or chiefly by the relations between 
the simple ideas of contiguity, causation, 

* This is only strictly true of the words relative to 
objects of sense.— H. 






400 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



causation, and resemblance ; but rather by 
the fitness of the combinations we make, to 
aid our own conceptions, and to convey 
them to others by language easily and 
agreeably. 

The end and use of language, without 
regard to the associating qualities of ideas, 
WW* lead men that have common under- 
standing to form such complex notions as 
are proper for expressing their wants, their 
thoughts, and their desires : and in every 
language we shall find these to be the com- 
plex notions that have names. 

In the rudest state of society, men must 
have occasion to form the general notions of 
man, woman, father, mother, son, daughter, 
sister, brother, neighbour, friend, enemy, 
and many others, to express the common 
relations of one person to another. 

If they are employed in hunting, they 
must have general terms to express the 
various implements and operations of the 
chase. Their houses and clothing, however 
simple, will furnish another set of general 
terms, to express the materials, the work- 
manship, and the excellencies and defects 
of those fabrics. If they sail upon rivers 
or upon the sea, this will give occasion to a 
great number of general terms, which other- 
wise would never have occurred to their 
thoughts. 

The same thing may be said of agricul- 
ture, of pasturage, of every art they prac- 
tise, and of every branch of knowledge they 
attain. The necessity of general terms for 
communicating our sentiments is obvious ; 
and the invention of them, as far as we find 
them necessary, requires no other talent 
but that degree of understanding which is 
common to men. [462] 

The notions of debtor and creditor, of 
profit and loss, of account, balance, stock 
on hand, and many others, are owing to 
commerce. The notions of latitude, longi- 
tude, course, distance, run, and those of 
ships, and of their various parts, furniture, 
and operations, are owing to navigation. 
The anatomist must have names for the 
various similar and dissimilar parts of the 
human body, and words to express their 
figure, position, structure, and use. The 
physician must have names for the various 
diseases of the body, their causes, symp- 
toms, and means of cure. 

The like may be said of the grammarian, 
the logician, the critic, the rhetorician, the 
moralist, the naturalist, the mechanic, and 
every man that professes any art or science. 

When any discovery is made in art or in 
nature, which requires new combinations and 
new words to express it properly, the in- 
' vention of these is easy to those who have 
a distinct notion of the thing to be expressed ; 
and such words will readily be adopted, and 
receive the public sanction. 



If, on the other hand, any man of emi- 
nence, through vanity or want of judgment, 
should invent new words, to express com- 
binations that have neither beauty nor 
utility, or which may as well be expressed 
in the current language, his authority may 
give them currency for a time with servile 
imitators or blind admirers ; but the judi- 
cious will laugh at them, and they will soon 
lose their credit. So true was the observa- 
tion made by Fomponius Marcellus, an 
ancient grammarian, to Tiberius Caesar : — 
" You, Ccesar, have power to make a man 
a denizen of Rome, but not to make a word 
a denizen of the Roman language."* 

Among nations that are civilized, and 
have intercourse with one another, the most 
necessary and useful arts will be common ; 
the important parts of human knowledge 
will be common ; their several languages 
will be fitted to it, and consequently to one 
another. [463] 

New inventions of general use give an 
easy birth to new complex notions and new 
names, which spread as far as the inven- 
tion does. How many new complex notions 
have been formed, and names for them 
invented in the languages of Europe, by the 
modern inventions of printing, of gun- 
powder, of the mariner's compass, of opti- 
cal glasses ? The simple ideas combined 
in those complex notions, and the associat- 
ing qualities of those ideas, are very an- 
cient ; but they never produced those com- 
plex notions until there was use for them. 

What is peculiar to a nation in its cus- 
toms, manners, or laws, will give occasion 
to complex notions and words peculiar to 
the language of that nation. Hence it is 
easy to see why an impeachment, and an 
attainder, in the English language, and 
ostracism in the Greek language, have not 
names answering to them in other lan- 
guages. 

I apprehend, therefore, that it is utility, 
and not the associating qualities of the ideas, 
that has led men to form only certain com- 
binations, and to give names to them in 
language, while they neglect an intnite 
number that might be formed. 

The common occurrences of life, in the 
intercourse of men, and in their occupa- 
tions, give occasion to many complex no- 
tions. We see an individual occurrence, 
which draws our attention more or less, 
and may be a subject of conversation. 
Other occurrences, similar to this in many 
respects, have been observed, or may be 
expected. It is convenient that we should 
be able to speak of what is common to 
them all, leaving out the unimportant cir- 



',* «'Tu, Cffisar, civitatem .dare potes horainibus, 
verbis non potes." See Suetonius Be IUust-Gram- 
nuxtyC. 82.— H. 

[462, 463] 



chap, iv.] CONCEPTIONS FORMED BY COMBINATION, 



401 



cumstances of time, place, and persons. 
This we can do with great ease, by giving 
a name to what is common to all those 
individual occurrences. Such a name is a 
great aid to language, because it compre- 
hends, in one word, a great number of 
simple notions, which it would be very 
tedious to express in detail. {464] 

Thus, men have formed the complex 
notions of eating, drinking, sleeping, walk- 
ing, riding, running, buying, selling, plough- 
ing, sowing, a dance, a feast, war, a battle, 
victory, triumph ; and others, without 
number. 

Such things must frequently be the sub- 
ject of conversation ; and, if we had not a 
more compendious way of expressing them 
than by a detail of all the simple notions 
they comprehend, we should lose the benefit 
of speech. 

The different talents, dispositions, and 
habits of men in society, being interesting 
to those who have to do with them, will in 
every language have general names — such 
as wise, foolish, knowing, ignorant, plain, 
cunning. In every operative art, the tools, 
instruments, materials, the work produced, 
and the various excellencies and defects of 
these, must have general names. 

The various relations of persons, and of 
things which cannot escape the observation 
of men in society, lead us to many complex 
general notions ; such as father, brother, 
friend, enemy, master, servant, property, 
theft, rebellion. 

The terms of art in the sciences make 
another class of general names of complex 
notions ; as in mathematics, axiom, defini- 
tion, problem, theorem, demonstration. 

I do not attempt a complete enumeration 
even of the classes of complex general con- 
ceptions. Those I have named as a speci- 
men, I think, are mostly comprehended 
under what Mr Locke calls mixed modes 
and relations; which, he justly observes, 
have names given them in language, in 
preference to innumerable others that might 
be formed ; for this reason only, that they 
are useful for the purpose of communicat- 
ing our thoughts by language. [465] 

In all the languages of mankind, not only 
the writings and discourses of the learned, 
but the conversation of the vulgar, is almost 
entirely made up of general words, which 
are the signs of general conceptions, either 
simple or complex. And in every language, 
we find the terms signifying complex no- 
tions to be such, and only such, as the use 
of language requires. 

There remains a very large class of com- 
plex general terms, on which I shall make 
some observations ; I mean those by which 
we name the species, genera, and tribes of 
natural substances. 

It is utility, indeed, that leads us to give 
[464-406] ' 



general names to the various species of na- 
tural substances ; but, in combining the 
attributes which are included under the 
specific name, we are more aided and di- 
rected by nature than in forming other com- 
binations of mixed modes and relations. In 
the last, the ingredients are brought to- 
gether in the occurrences of life, or in the 
actions or thoughts of men. But, in the 
first, the ingredients are united by nature in 
many individual substances which God has 
made. We form a general notion of those 
attributes wherein many individuals agree. 
We give a specific name to this combina- 
tion, which name is common to all sub- 
stances having those attributes, which 
either do or may exist. The specific name 
comprehends neither more nor fewer attri- 
butes than we find proper to put into its 
definition. It comprehends not time, nor 
place, nor even existence, although there 
can be no individual without these. 

This work of the understanding is abso- 
lutely necessary for speaking intelligibly of 
the productions of nature, and for reaping 
the benefits we receive, and avoiding the 
dangers we are exposed to from them. The 
individuals are so many, that to give a 
proper name to each would be beyond the 
power of language. If a good or bad qua- 
lity was observed in an individual, of how 
small use would this be, if there was not a 
species in which the same quality might be 
expected ! [466] 

Without some general knowledge of the 
qualities of natural substances, human life 
could not be preserved. And there can be 
no general knowledge of this kind without 
reducing them to species under specific 
names. For this reason, among the rudest 
nations, we find names for fire, water, earth, 
air, mountains, fountains, rivers • for the 
kinds of vegetables they use ; of animals 
they hunt or tame, or that are found useful 
or hurtful. 

Each of those names signifies in general 
a substance having a certain combination of 
attributes. The name, therefore, must be 
common to all substances in which those 
attributes are found. 

Such general names of substances being 
found in all vulgar languages, before philo- 
sophers began to make accurate divisions 
and less obvious distinctions, it is not to be 
expected that their meaning should be more 
precise than is necessary for the common 
purposes of life. 

As the knowledge of nature advances, 
more species of natural substances are 
observed, and their useful qualities dis- 
covered. In order that this important part 
of human knowledge may be communicated, 
and handed down to future generations, it 
is not sufficient that the species have names. 
Such is the fluctuating state of language, 
2 D 



402 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay V 



that a general name will not always retain 
the same precise signification, unless it have 
a definition in wluch men are disposed to 
acquiesce- 

There was undoubtedly a great fund of 
natural knowledge among the Greeks and 
Romans in the time of Pliny. There is a 
great fund in his Natural History ; but 
much of it is lost to us — for this reason 
among others, that we know not what 
species of substance he means by such a 
name. 

Nothing could have prevented this loss 
but an accurate definition of the name, by 
which the species might have been distin- 
guished from all others as long as that name 
and its definition remained. [467] 

To prevent such loss in future times, 
modern philosophers have very laudably 
attempted to give names and accurate defin- 
itions of all the known species of sub- 
stances wherewith the bountiful Creator 
hath enriched our globe. 

This is necessary, in order to form a 
copious and distinct language concerning 
them, and, consequently, to facilitate our 
knowledge of them, and to convey it to 
future generations. 

Every species that is known to exist 
ought to have a name ; and that name 
ought to be defined by such attributes as 
serve best to distinguish the species from 
all others. 

Nature invites to this work, by having 
formed things so as to make it both easy 
and important. 

For, first, We perceive numbers of indi- 
vidual substances so like in their obvious 
qualities, that the most unimproved tribes 
of men consider them as of one species, and 
give them one common name. 

Secondly, The more latent qualities of 
substances are generally the same in all 
the individuals of a species ; so that what, 
by observation or experiment, is found in 
a few individuals of a species, is presumed 
and commonly found to belong to the 
whole. By this we are enabled, from par- 
ticular facts, to draw general conclusions. 
This kind of induction is, indeed, the mas- 
ter-key to the knowledge of Nature, without 
which we could form no general conclu- 
sions in that branch of philosophy. 

And, thirdly, By the very constitution 
of our nature, we are led, without reason- 
ing, to ascribe to the whole species what 
we have found to belong to the individuals. 
It is thus we come to know that fire burns 
and water drowns ; that bodies gravitate 
and bread nourishes. [468] 

The species of two of the kingdoms of 
Nature— to wit, the animal and the vege- 
table — seem to be fixed by Nature, by the 
power they have of producing their like. 
And, in these, men, in all ages and nations, 



have accounted the parent and the progeny 
of the same species. The differences among 
Naturalists, with regard to the species of 
these two kingdoms, are very inconsider- 
able, and may be occasioned by the changes 
produced by soil, climate, and culture, and 
sometimes by monstrous productions, which 
are comparatively rare. 

In the inanimate kingdom we have not 
the same means of dividing thingo into 
species, and, therefore, the limits of species 
seem to be more arbitrary. But, from the 
progress already made, there is ground to 
hope that, even in this kingdom, as the 
knowledge of it advances, the various 
species may be so well distinguished and 
defined as to answer every valuable pur- 
pose. 

When the species are so numerous as to 
burden the memory, it is greatly assisted 
by distributing them into genera, the genera 
into tribes, the tribes into orders, and the 
orders into classes. 

Such a regular distribution of natural 
substances, by divisions and subdivisions, 
has got the name of a system. 

It is not a system of truths, but a system 
of general terms, with their definitions ; 
and it is not only a great help to memory, 
but facilitates very much the definition of 
the terms. For the definition of the genus 
is common to all the species of that genus, 
and so is understood in the definition of 
each species, without the trouble of repeti- 
tion. In like manner, the definition of a 
tribe is understood in the definition of every 
genus, and every species of that tribe ; and 
the same may be said of every superior 
division. [469] 

The effect of such a systematical distri- 
bution of the productions of Nature is seen 
in our systems of zoology, botany, and min- 
eralogy ; in which a species is commonly 
defined accurately in a line or two, which, 
without the systematical arrangement, could 
hardly be defined in a page. 

With regard to the utility of systems of 
this kind, men have gone into contrary ex- 
tremes ; some have treated them with con- 
tempt, as a mere dictionary of words ; 
others, perhaps, rest in such systems as all 
that is worth knowing in the works of 
Nature. 

On the one hand, it is not the intention 
of such systems to communicate all that is 
known of the natural productions which 
they describe. The properties most fit for 
defining and distinguishing the several 
species, are not always those that are most 
useful to be known. To discover and to 
communicate the uses of natural substances 
in life and in the arts, is, no doubt, that 
part of the business of a naturalist which is 
the most important ; and the systematical 
arrangement of them is chiefly to be valued 
[467-469] 



chap. v.] OF NAMES GIVEN TO GENERAL NOTIONS. 



403 



for its subserviency to this end. This every 
judicious naturalist will grant. 

But, on the other hand, the labour is not 
to be despised, by which the road to an use- 
ful and important branch of knowledge is 
made easy in all time to come; especially 
when this labour requires both extensive 
knowledge and great abilities. 

The talent of arranging properly and 
defining accurately, is so rare, and at the 
same time so useful, that it may very justly 
be considered as a proof of real genius, and 
as entitled to a high degree of praise. There 
is an intrinsic beauty in arrangement, which 
captivates the mind, and gives pleasure, 
even abstracting from its utility ; as in most 
other things, so in this particularly, Nature 
has joined beauty with utility. The arrange- 
ment of an army in the day of battle is a 
grand spectacle. The same men crowded 
in a fair, have no such effect. It is not 
more strange, therefore, that some men 
spend their days in studying systems of 
Nature, than that other men employ their 
lives in the study of languages. The most 
important end of those systems, surely", is 
to form a copious and an unambiguous lan- 
guage concerning the productions of Nature, 
by which every useful discovery concerning 
them may be communicated to the present, 
and transmitted to all future generations, 
without danger of mistake. [470] 

General terms, especially such as are 
complex in their signification, will never 
keep one precise meaning, without accurate 
definition ; and accurate definitions of such 
terms can in no way be formed so easily and 
advantageously as by reducing the things 
they signify into a regular system. 

Very eminent men in the medical profes- 
sion, in order to remove all ambiguity in 
the names of diseases, and to advance the 
healing art, have, of late, attempted to re- 
duce into a systematical order the diseases 
of the human body, and to give distinct 
names and accurate definitions of the seve- 
ral species, penera, orders, and classes, into 
which they distribute them ; and I appre- 
hend that, in every art and science, where 
the terms of the art have any ambiguity 
that obstructs its progress, this method will 
be found the easiest and most successful for 
the remedy of that evil. 

It were eveu to be wished that the gene- 
ral terms which we find in common lan- 
guage, as well as those of the arts and 
sciences, could be reduced to a systematica! 
arrangement, and defined so as that they 
might be free from ambiguity ; but, per- 
haps, the obstacles to this are insurmount- 
able. I know no man who has attempted it 
but Bishop Wilkins in his Essay towards a 
real character and a philosophical language. • 

* In this attempt Wilkins was preceded by our 
[470-472] 



The attempt was grand, and worthy of a 
man of genius. 

The formation of such systems, therefore, 
of the various productions of Nature, in- 
stead of being despised, ought to be ranked 
among the valuable improvements of modern 
ages, and to be the more esteemed that its 
utility reaches to the most distant future 
times, and, like the invention of writing, 
serves to embalm a most important branch 
of human knowledge, and to preserve it from 
being corrupted or lost. [471] 



CHAPTER V. 

OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE NAMES GIVEN 
TO OUR GENERAL NOTIONS. 

Having now explained, as well as I am 
able, those operations of the mind by which 
we analyse the objects which nature pre- 
sents to our observation, into their simple 
attributes, giving a general name to each, and 
by which we combine any number of such 
attributes into one whole, and give a general 
name to that combination, I shall offer some 
observations relating to our general notions, 
whether simple or complex. 

I apprehend that the names given to 
them by modern philosophers, have contri- 
buted to darken our speculations about them, 
and to render them difficult and abstruse. 

We call them general notions, concep- 
tions, ideas. The words notion and con- 
ception, in their proper and most common 
sense, signify the act or operation of the 
mind in conceiving an object. In a figura- 
tive sense, they are sometimes put for the 
object conceived. And I think they are 
rarely, if ever, used in this figurative sense, 
except when we speak of what we call 
general notions or general conceptions. The 
word idea, as it is used in modern times, 
has the same ambiguity. 

Now, it is only in the last of these senses, 
and not in the first, that we can be said to 
have general notions or conceptions. The 
generality is in the object conceived, and 
not in the act of the mind by which it is 
conceived. Every act of the mind is an in- 
dividual act, which does or did exist. [472] 
But we have power to conceive things which 
neither do nor ever did exist. We have 
power to conceive attributes without regard 
to their existence. The conception of such 
an attribute is a real and individual act of 
the mind ; but the attribute conceived is 
common to many individuals that do or may 
exist. We are too apt to confound an ob- 
ject of conception with the conception of 

countryman Dalgarno ; and from Dalgarno it is 
highly probable that Wilkins borrowed the idea. 
But even Dalgarno was not the first who conceived 
the project.— H. 

2 D 2 



404 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay v. 



that object. But the danger of doing this 
must be much greater when the object of 
conception is called a conception. 

The Peripatetics gave to such objects of 
conception the names of universals, and of 
predicables. Those names had no ambi- 
guity, and I think were much more fit to 
express what was meant by them than the 
names we use. 

It is for this reason that I have so often 
used the word attribute, which has the same 
meaning with predicable. And, for the same 
reason, I have thought it necessary repeat- 
edly to warn the reader, that when, in com- 
pliance with custom, I speak of general 
notions or general conceptions, I always 
mean things conceived, and not the act of 
the mind in conceiving them. 

The Pythagoreans and Platonists gave 
the name of ideas to such general objects of 
conception, and to nothing else. As we 
borrowed the word idea from them, so that 
it is now familiar in all the languages of 
Europe, I think it would have been happy 
if we had also borrowed their meaning, and 
had used it only to signify what they meant 
by it. I apprehend we want an unambigu- 
ous word to distinguish things barely con- 
ceived from things that exist. If the word 
idea was used for this purpose only, it would 
be restored to its original meaning, and 
supply that want. 

We may surely agree with the Platonists 
in the meaning of the word idea, without 
adopting their theory concerning ideas. We 
need not believe, with them, that ideas are 
eternal and self-existent, and that they 
have a more real existence than the things 
we see and feel. [473] 

They were led to give existence to ideas, 
from the common prejudice that everything 
which is an object of conception must 
really exist ; and, having once given exist- 
ence to ideas, the rest of their mysterious 
system about ideas followed of course ; for 
things merely conceived have neither be- 
ginning nor end, time nor place ; they are 
subject to no change ; they are the patterns 
and exemplars according to which the 
Deity made everything that he made ; for 
the work must be conceived by the artificer 
before it is made. 

These are undeniable attributes of the 
ideas of Plato ; and, if we add to them that 
of real existence, we have the whole myste- 
rious system of Platonic ideas. Take away 
the attribute of existence, and suppose 
them not to be things that exist, but 
things that are barely conceived, and all 
the mystery is removed ; all that remains 
is level to the human understanding. 

The word essence came to be much used 
among the schoolmen, and what the Pla- 
tonists called the idea of a species, they 
called its essence. The word essentia is 



said to have been made by Cicero ; but 
even his authority could not give it cur- 
rency, until long after his time. It came 
at last to be used, and the schoolmen fell 
into much the same opinions concerning 
essences, as the Platonists held concerning 
ideas. The essences of things were held to 
be uncreated, eternal, and immutable. 

Mr Locke distinguishes two kinds of 
essence, the real and the nominal. By the 
real essence, he means the constitution of 
an individual, which makes it to be what it 
is. This essence must begin and end with 
the individual to which it belongs. It is 
not, therefore, a Platonic idea. But what 
Mr Locke calls the nominal essence, is the 
constitution of a species, or that which 
makes an individual to be of such a species ; 
and this is nothing but that combination of 
attributes which is signified by the name of 
the species, and which we conceive without 
regard to existence. [474] 

The essence of a species, therefore, is 
what the Platonists called the idea of the 
species. 

If the word idea be restricted to the 
meaning which it bore among the Plato- 
nists and Pythagoreans, many things which 
Mr Locke has said with regard to ideas 
will be just and true, and others will not. 

It will be true that most words (in- 
deed all general words) are the signs of 
ideas ; but proper names are not : they 
signify individual things, and not ideas. It 
will be true not only that there are general 
and abstract ideas, but that all ideas are 
general and abstract. It will be so far 
from the truth, that all our simple ideas 
are got immediately, either from sensation 
or from consciousness, that no simple 
idea is got by either, without the co-opera- 
tion of other powers. The objects of sense, 
of memory, and of consciousness, are not 
ideas but individuals ; they must be anal- 
ysed by the understanding into their simple 
ingredients, before we can have simple 
ideas ; and those simple ideas must be 
again combined by the understanding, in 
distinct parcels, with names annexed, in 
order to give us complex ideas. It will be 
probable not only that brutes have no ab- 
stract ideas, but that they have no ideas at all. 

I shall only add that the learned author 
of the origin and progress of language, and, 
perhaps, his learned friend, Mr Harris, are 
the only modern authors I have met with 
who restrict the word idea to this meaning. 
Their acquaintance with ancient philosophy 
led them to this. What pity is it that a 
word which, in ancient philosophy, had a 
distinct meaning, and which, if kept to 
that meaning, would have been a real ac- 
quisition to our language, should be used 
by the moderns in so vague and ambiguous 
a manner, that it is more apt to perplex 
[473, 474] 



CHAP. VI.] 



OPINIONS ABOUT UNIVERSALS. 



405 



and darken our speculations, than to convey 
useful knowledge ! 

From all that has been said about ab- 
stract and general conceptions, I think we 
may draw the following conclusions con- 
cerning them. [475] 

First, That it is by abstraction that the 
mind is furnished with all its most simple 
and most distinct notions. The simplest 
objects of sense appear both complex and 
indistinct, until by abstraction they are 
analysed into their more simple elements ; 
and the same may be said of the objects of 
memory and of consciousness. 

Secondly, Our most distinct complex 
notions are those that are formed by com- 
pounding the simple notions got by abstrac- 
tion. 

Thirdly, Without the powers of abstract- 
ing and generalising, it would be impossible 
to reduce things into any order and method, 
by dividing them into genera and species. 

Fourthly, Without those powers there 
could be no definition ; for definition can 
only be applied to universals, and no indi- 
vidual can be defined. 

Fifthly, Without abstract and general 
notions there can neither be reasoning nor 
language. 

Sixthly, As brute animals shew no signs 
of being able to distinguish the various 
attributes of the same subject; of being 
able to class things into genera and species ; 
to define, to reason, or to communicate 
their thoughts by artificial signs, as men 
do — I must think, with Mr Locke, that they 
have not the powers of abstracting and 
generalising, and that, in this particular, 
nature has made a specific difference be- 
tween them and the human species. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS ABOUT 
UNIVERSALS. 

In the ancient philosophy, the doctrine of 
universals — that is, of things which we ex- 
press by general terms — makes a great figure. 
The ideas of the Pythagoreans and Pla- 
tonists, of which so much has been already 
said, were universals. [476] All science is 
employed about universals as its object. It 
was thought that there can be no s-cience, 
unless its object be something real and 
immutable ; and therefore those who paid 
homage to truth and science, maintained 
that ideas or universals have a real and 
immutable existence. 

The sceptics, on the contrary, (for there 
were sceptical philosophers in those early 
days,) maintained that all things are mu- 
table and in a perpetual fluctuation ; and, 
from this principle, inferred that there is 
[475-177] 



no science, no truth ; that all is uncertain 
opinion. 

Plato, and his masters of the Pythagorean 
school, yielded this with regard to objects 
of sense, and acknowledged that there could 
be no science or certain knowledge con- 
cerning them. But they held that there 
are objects of intellect of a superior order 
and nature, which are permanent and im- 
mutable. These are ideas, or universal 
natures, of which the objects of sense are 
only the images and shadows. 

To these ideas they ascribed, as I have 
already observed, the most magnificent 
attributes. Of man, of a rose, of a circle, 
and of every species of things, they believed 
that there is one idea or form, which ex- 
isted from eternity, before any individual of 
the species was formed ; that this idea is 
the exemplar or pattern, according to which 
the Deity formed the individuals of the 
species ; that every individual of the species 
participates of this idea, which constitutes 
its essence ; and that this idea is likewise 
an object of the human intellect, when, by 
due abstraction, we discern it to be one in 
all the individuals of the species. 

Thus the idea of every species, though 
one and immutable, might be considered in 
three different views or respects : first, As 
having an eternal existence before there 
was any individual of the species ; secondly, 
As existing in every individual of that spe- 
cies, without division or multiplication, and 
making the essence of the species ; and, 
thirdly, As an object of intellect and of science 
in man. [477] 

Such I take to be the doctrine of Plato, 
as far as I am able to comprehend it. His 
disciple Aristotle rejected the first of these 
views of ideas as visionary, but differed 
little from his master with regard to the 
two last. He did not admit the existence 
of universal natures antecedent to the ex- 
istence of individuals : but he held that 
every individual consists of matter and 
form ; that the form (which I take to be 
what Plato calls the idea) is common to all 
the individuals of the species ; and that the 
human intellect is fitted to receive the forms 
of things as objects of contemplation. Such 
profound speculations about the nature of 
universals, we find even in the first ages of 
philosophy.* I wish I could make them 
more intelligible to myself and to the reader. 

The division of universals into five 
classes — to wit, genus, species, specific 
difference, properties, and accidents — is 
likewise very ancient, and I conceive was 
borrowed by the Peripatetics from the 
Pythagorean school. + 

* Different philosophers have maintained that' 
Aristotle was a Realist, a Conceptualist, and a No- 
minalist, in the strictest sense. — H. 

+ This proceeds on the supposition that the sup. 
I osititious Pythagorean treatises are genuine.— H. 



406 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



Porphyry has given us a very distinct 
treatise upon these, as an introduction to 
Aristotle's categories. But he has omitted 
the intricate metaphysical questions that 
were agitated about their nature : such as, 
whether genera and species do really exist 
in nature, or whether they are only con- 
ceptions of the human mind. If they exist 
in nature, whether they are corporeal or 
incorporeal ; and whether they are inherent 
in the objects of sense, or disjoined from 
them. These questions, he tells us, for 
brevity's sake, he omits, because they are 
very profound, and require accurate discus- 
sion. It is probable that these questions 
exercised the wits of the philosophers till 
about the twelfth century. [478] 

About that time, Roscelinus or Rusce- 
linus, the master of the famous Abelard, 
introduced a new doetrine — that there is 
nothing universal but words or names. 
For this, and other heresies, he was much 
persecuted. However, by his eloquence 
and abilities, and those of his disciple Abe- 
lard, the doctrine spread, and those who 
followed it were called Nominalists.* His 
antagonists, who held that there are things 
that are really universal, were called Realists. 
The scholastic philosophers, from the be- 
ginning of the twelfth century, were divided 
into these two sects. Some few took a 
middle road between the contending parties- 
That universality which the Realists held 
to be in things themselves, Nominalists in 
names only, they held to be neither in things 
nor in names only, but in our conceptions. 
On this account they were called Concep- 
tualists : but, being exposed to the batteries 
of both the opposite parties, they made no 
great figure, -f 

When the sect of Nominalists was like 
to expire, it received new life and spirit 
from Occam, the disciple of Scotus, in the 
fourteenth century. Then the dispute about 
universals, a parte rei, was revived with 
the greatest animosity in the schools of 
Britain, France, and Germany, and carried 
on, not by arguments only, but by bitter 
reproaches, blows, and bloody affrays, until 
the doctrines of Luther and the other Re- 
formers turned the attention of the learned 
world to more important subjects. 

After the revival of learning, Mr Hobbes 
adopted the opinion of the Nominalists. £ 

* Abelard was not a Nominalist like Roscelinus ; 
but held a doctrine, intermediate between absolute 
Nominalism and Healism, corresponding to the 
opinion since called Conceptualism. A flood of light 
has been thrown upon Abclard's doctrines, by M. 
Cousin's introduction to his recent publication of 
the unedited works of that illustrious thinker. — 
H. 

t The later Nominalists, of the school of Occam, 
were really Conceptualists in our sense of the term. 
— H. 

t Hobbes is justly said by Leibnitz to have been 
*ps>'s A'ominalibus nominalior. Tltcy were really 
Conceptualists.— H. 



* Human Nature," chap 5, § 6—" It is 
plain, therefore," says he, "that there is no- 
thing universal but names." And in his 
" Leviathan," part i chap 4, " There being 
nothing universal but names, proper names 
bring to mind one thing only ; universals 
recall any one of many." 

Mr Locke, according to the division be- 
fore mentioned, I think, may be accounted 
a Conceptualist. He does not maintain 
that there are things that are universal ; 
but that we have general or universal ideas 
which we form by abstraction ; and this 
power of forming abstract and general ideas, 
he conceives to be that which makes the 
chief distinction in point of understanding, 
between men and brutes. [479] 

Mr Locke's doctrine about abstraction 
has been combated by two very powerful 
antagonists, Bishop Berkeley and Mr Hume, 
who have taken up the opinion of the Nom- 
inalists. The former thinks, " That the 
opinion that the mind hath a power of form- 
ing abstract ideas or notions of things, has 
had a chief part in rendering speculation 
intricate and perplexed, and has occasioned 
innumerable errors and difficulties in almost 
all parts of knowledge." That " abstract 
ideas are like a fine and subtile net, which 
has miserably perplexed and entangled the 
minds of men, with this peculiar circum- 
stance, that by how much the finer and 
more curious was the wit of any man, by 
so much the deeper was he like to be en- 
snared, and faster held therein." That, 
" among all the false principles that have 
obtained in the world, there is none hath a 
more wide influence over the thoughts of 
speculative men, than this of abstract gene- 
ral ideas." 

The good bishop, therefore, in twenty- 
four pages of the introduction to his " Prin- 
ciples of Human Knowledge," encounters 
this principle with a zeal proportioned to 
his apprehension of its malignant and ex- 
tensive influence. 

That the zeal of the sceptical philosopher 
against abstract ideas was almost equal to 
that of the bishop, appears from his words, 
" Treatise of Human Nature," Book I. 
part i. § 7 : — " A very material question 
has been started concerning abstract or 
general ideas — whether they be general or 
particular, in the mind's conception of them. 
A great philosopher" (he means Dr Berke- 
ley) " has disputed the received opinion in 
this particular, and has asserted that all 
general ideas are nothing but particular ones 
annexed to a certain term, which gives them 
a more extensive signification, and makes 
them recall, upon occasion, other individuals 
which are similar to them. As I look upon 
this to be one of the greatest and most 
valuable discoveries that have been made 
of late years in the republic of letters, I 
[478. ¥19] 



CHAP. VI.] 



OPINIONS ABOUT UNIVERSALE 



407 



shall here endeavour to confirm it by some 
arguments, which, I hope, will put it beyond 
all doubt and controversy." [480] 

I shall make an end of this subject, with 
some reflections on what has been said upon 
it by these two eminent philosophers. 

1. First, I apprehend that we cannot, 
with propriety, be said to have abstract and 
general ideas, either in the popular or in the 
philosophical sense of that word. In the 
popular sense, an idea is a thought ; it is 
the act of the mind in thinking, or in con- 
ceiving any object. This act of the mind 
is always an individual act, and, therefore, 
there can be no general idea in this sense. 
In the philosophical sense, an idea is an 
image in the mind, or in the brain, which, 
in Mr Locke's system, is the immediate ob- 
ject of thought ; in the system of Berkeley 
and Hume, the only object of thought. I 
believe there are no ideas of this kind, and, 
therefore, no abstract general ideas. In- 
deed, if there were really such images in 
the mind or in the brain, they could not 
be general, because everything that really 
exists is an individual. Universals are 
neither acts of the mind, nor images in the 
mind. 

As, therefore, there are no general ideas 
in either of the senses in which the word 
idea is used by the moderns, Berkeley and 
Hume have, in this question, an advantage 
over -Mr Locke ; and their arguments against 
him are good ad hominem. They saw 
farther than he did into the just conse- 
quences of the hypothesis concerning ideas, 
which was common to them and to him ; 
and they reasoned justly from this hypo- 
thesis when they concluded from it, that 
there is neither a material world, nor any 
such power in the human mind as that of 
abstraction. [481] 

A triangle, in general, or any other uni- 
versal, might be called an idea by a Plato- 
nist ; but, in the style of modern philo- 
sophy, it is not an idea, nor do we ever 
ascribe to ideas the properties of triangles. 
It is never said of any idea, that it has 
three sides and three angles. We do not 
speak of equilateral, isosceles, or scalene 
ideas, nor of right-angled, acute-angled, or 
obtuse-angled ideas. And, if these attri- 
butes do not belong to ideas, it follows, 
necessarily, that a triangle is not an idea. 
The same reasoning may be applied to 
every other universal. 

Ideas are said to have a real existence in 
the mind, at least while we think of them ; 
but universals have no real existence. 
When we ascribe existence to them, it is 
not an existence in time or place, but exist- 
ence in some individual subject ; and this 
existence means no more but that they are 
truly attributes of such a subject. Their 
existence is nothing but predicability, or the 
[430-432] 



capacity of being attributed to a subject. 
The name of predicables, which was given 
them in ancient philosophy, is that which 
most properly expresses their nature. 

2. I think it must be granted, in the 
second place, that universals cannot be the 
objects of imagination, when we take that 
word in its strict and proper sense. " I 
find," says Berkeley, " I have a faculty of 
imagining or representing to myself the 
ideas of those particular things I have per- 
ceived, and of variously compounding and 
dividing them. I can imagine a man with 
two heads, or the upper parts of a man 
joined to the body of a horse. I can imagine 
the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself, 
abstracted or separated from the rest of the 
body. But then, whatever hand or eye I 
imagine, it must have some particular shape 
or colour. Likewise, the idea of a man that 
I frame to myself must be either of a white, 
or a black, or a tawny ; a straight or a 
crooked ; a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized 
man." 

I believe every man will find in himself 
what this ingenious author found — that he 
cannot imagine a man without colour, or 
stature, or shape. [482] 

Imagination, as we before observed, pro- 
perly signifies a conception of the appear- 
ance an object would make to the eye if 
actually seen.* An universal is not an 
object of any external sense, and therefore 
cannot be imagined ; but it may be dis- 
tinctly conceived. When Mr Pope says, 
" The proper study of mankind is man," I 
conceive his meaning distinctly, though I 
neither imagine a black or a white, a 
crooked or a straight man. The distinction 
between conception and imagination is real, 
though it be too often overlooked, and the 
words taken to be synonimous. I can con- 
ceive a thing that is impossible,-]- but I 
cannot distinctly imagine a thing that is 
impossible. I can conceive a proposition or 
a demonstration, but I cannot imagine 
either. I can conceive understanding and 
will, virtue and vice, and other attributes of 
mind, but I cannot imagine them. In like 
manner, I can distinctly conceive uni- 
versals, but I cannot imagine them. J 

As to the manner how we conceive uni- 
versals, I confess my ignorance. I know 
not how I hear, or see, or remember, and 
as little do I know how I conceive things 
that have no existence. In all our original 

* See above, p. 366, a, note.— H. 

t See above, p. 377, b, note. — H. 

X Imagination and Conception are distinguished, 
but the latter ought not to be used in the vague and 
extensive signification of Reid. The discrimination 
in question is best made in the German language of 
philosophy, where the terms Begriffe (Conceptions) 
are strongly contrasted with Anschauungen (Intui- 
tions), Bilden (Images), &c. See above, p. 360, a, note 
t ; p. 365, b, note -f. The reader may compare 
Stewart's " Elements," I. p. 196.— H. 



403 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay y. 



faculties, the fabric and manner of operation 
is, I apprehend, beyond our comprehension, 
and perhaps is perfectly understood by him 
only who made them. 

But we ought not to deny a fact of which 
we are conscious, though we know not how 
it is brought about. And I think we may 
be certain that universals are not conceived 
by means of images of them in our minds, 
because there can be no image of an uni- 
versal. 

3. It seems to me, that on this question 
Mr Locke and his two antagonists have 
divided the truth between them. He saw 
very clearly, that the power of forming ab- 
stract and general conceptions is one of the 
most distinguishing powers of the human 
mind, and puts a specific difference between 
man and the brute creation. But he did 
not see that this power is perfectly irrecon- 
cileable to his doctrine concerning ideas. 
[483] 

His opponents saw this inconsistency ; 
but, instead of rejecting the hypothesis of 
ideas, they explain away the power of ab- 
straction, and leave no specific distinction 
between the human understanding and that 
of brutes. 

4. Berkeley,* in his reasoning against 
abstract general ideas, seems unwillingly 
or unwarily to grant all that is necessary 
to support abstract and general concep- 
tions. 

*' A man," he says, " may consider a 
figure merely as triangular, without attend- 
ing to the particular qualities of the angles, 
or relations of the sides- So far he may 
abstract. But this will never prove that 
he can frame an abstract general inconsist- 
ent idea of a triangle." 

If a man may consider a figure merely 
as triangular, he must have some concep- 
tion of this object of his consideration ; for 
no man can consider a thing which he does 
not conceive. He has a conception, there- 
fore, of a triangular figure, merely as such. 
I know no more that is meant by an abstract 
general conception of a triangle. 

He that considers a figure merely as tri- 
angular, must understand what is meant by 
the word triangular. If, to the conception 
he joins to this word, he adds any particu- 
lar quality of angles or relation of sides, he 
misunderstands it, and does not consider 
the figure merely as triangular. Whence, 
I think, it is evident, that he who considers 
a figure merely as triangular must have the 
conception of a triangle, abstracting from 
any quality of angles or relation of sides. 

The Bishop, in like manner, grants, 
" That we may consider Peter so far forth 
as man, or so far forth as animal, without 



* On Reid's criticUm of Berkelev, <-ee Stewart, 
[Elpnents, II. i>. lit), >q.)— H. 



framing the forementioned abstract idea, in 
as much as all that is perceived is not 
considered." It may here be observed, 
that he who considers Peter so far forth as 
man, or so far forth as animal, must con- 
ceive the meaning of those abstract general 
words man and animal, and he who con- 
ceives the meaning of them has an abstract 
general conception. [484] 

From these concessions, one would be 
apt to conclude that the Bishop thinks that 
we can abstract, but that we cannot frame 
abstract ideas ; and in this I should agree 
with him. But I cannot reconcile his con- 
cessions with the general principle he lays 
down before. " To be plain," says he, ''I 
deny that I can abstract one from another, 
or conceive separately those qualities which 
it is impossible should exist so separated." 
This appears to me inconsistent with the 
concessions above mentioned, and incon- 
sistent with experience. 

If we can consider a figure merely as 
triangular, without attending to the parti- 
cular quality of the angles or relation of the 
sides, this, I think, is conceiving separately 
things which cannot exist so separated ; 
for surely a triangle cannot exist without 
a particular quality of angles and relation 
of sides. And it is well known, from ex- 
perience, that a man may have a distinct 
conception of a triangle, without having 
any conception or knowledge of many of 
the properties without which a triangle 
cannot exist. 

Let us next consider-the Bishop's notion 
of generalising.* He does not absolutely 
deny that there are general ideas, but only 
that there are abstract general ideas. "An 
idea," he says, " which, considered in it- 
self, is particular, becomes general, by be- 
ing made to represent or stand for all other 
particular ideas of the same sort. To make 
this plain by an example : Suppose a geo- 
metrician is demonstrating the method of 
cutting a line in two equal parts. He 
draws, for instance, a black line, of an inch 
in length. This, which is in itself a parti- 
cular line, is, nevertheless, with regard to 
its signification, general ; since, as it is 
there used, it represents all particular lines 
whatsoever ; so that what is demonstrated 
of it, is demonstrated of all lines, or, in 
other words, of a line in general. And as 
that particular line becomes general by be- 
ing made a sign, so the name line, which, 
taken absolutely, is particular, by being a 
sign, is made general." [485] 

Here I observe, that when a particular 
idea, is made a sign to represent and stand 
for all of a sort, this supposes a distinction 
of things into sorts or species. To be of a 
sort implies having those attributes which 

* See Stewart, {FAanatis, II p. 125.)— H. 

[183-485] 



CHAP. VI.] 



OPINIONS ABOUT UNIVERSALS. 



409 



characterise the sort, and are common to 
all the individuals that belong to it. There 
cannot, therefore, be a sort without general 
attributes, nor can there be any conception 
of a sort without a conception of those 
general attributes which distinguish it. The 
conception of a sort, therefore, is an ab- 
stract general conception. 

The particular idea cannot surely be made 
a sign of a thing of which we have no con- 
ception. I do not say that you must have 
an idea of the sort, but surely you ought 
to understand or conceive what it means, 
when you make a particular idea a repre- 
sentative of it ; otherwise your particular 
idea represents, you know not what. 

When I demonstrate any general pro- 
perty of a triangle, such as, that the three 
angles are equal to two right angles, I must 
understand or conceive distinctly what is 
common to all triangles. I must distinguish 
the common attributes of all triangles from 
those wherein particular triangles may differ. 
And, if I conceive distinctly what is common 
to all triangles, without confounding it with 
what is not so, this is to form a general con- 
ception of a triangle. And without this, it 
is impossible to know that the demonstra- 
tion extends to all triangles. 

The Bishop takes particular notice of this 
argument, and makes this answer to it : — 
"' Though the idea I have in view, whilst 
I make the demonstration, be, for instance, 
that of an isosceles rectangular triangle, 
whose sides are of a determinate length, I 
may nevertheless be certain that it extends 
to all other rectilinear triangles, of what 
sort or bigness soever; and that because 
neither the right angle, nor the equality or 
determinate length of the sides, are at all 
concerned in the demonstration." [486] 

But, if he do not, in the idea he has in 
view, clearly distinguish what is common 
to all triangles from what is not, it would 
be impossible to discern whether something 
that is not common be concerned in the 
demonstration or not. In order, therefore, 
to perceive that the demonstration extends 
to all triangles, it is necessary to have a 
distinct conception of what is common to 
all triangles, excluding from that concep- 
tion all that is not common. And this is 
all I understand by an abstract general 
conception of a triangle. 

Berkeley catches an advantage to his side 
of the question, from what Mr Locke ex- 
presses (too strongly indeed) of the difficulty 
of framing abstract general ideas, and the 
pains and skill necessary for that purpose. 
From which the Bishop infers, that a thing 
so difficult cannot be necessary for com- 
munication by language, which is so easy 
and familiar to all sorts of men. 

There may be some abstract and general 
conceptions that are difficult, or even be- 
[48G-4.8S-] 



yond the reach of persons of weak under- 
standing ; but there are innumerable which 
are not beyond the reach of children. It 
is impossible to learn language without 
acquiring general conceptions ; for there 
cannot be a single sentence without them. 
I believe the forming these, and being able 
to articulate the sounds of language, make 
up the whole difficulty that children find in 
learning language at first. 

But this difficulty, we see, they are able 
to overcome so early as not to remember 
the pains it cost them. They have the 
strongest inducement to exert all their 
labour and skill, in order to understand 
and to be understood ; and they no doubt 
do so. [437] 

The labour of forming abstract notions, is 
the labour of learning to speak, and to 
understand what is spoken. As the words 
of every language, excepting a few proper 
names, are general words, the minds of 
children are furnished with general con- 
ceptions, in proportion as they learn the 
meaning of general words. I believe most 
men have hardly any general notions but 
those which are expressed by the general 
words they hear and use in conversation. 
The meaning of some of these is learned 
by a definition, which at once conveys a 
distinct and accurate general conception. 
The meaning of other general words we 
collect, by a kind of induction, from the 
way in which we see them used on various 
occasions by those who understand the 
language. Of these our conception is often 
less distinct, and in different persons is 
perhaps not perfectly the same. 

" Is it not a hard thing," says the Bishop, 
" that a couple of children cannot prate to- 
gether of their sugar-plumbs and rattles, 
and the rest of their little trinkets, till they 
have first tacked together numberless in- 
consistencies, and so formed in their minds 
abstract general ideas, and annexed them 
to every common name they make use of ?" 

However hard a thing it may be, it is an 
evident truth, that a couple of children, 
even about their sugar- plumbs and their 
rattles, cannot prate so as to understand 
and be understood, until they have learned 
to conceive the meaning of many general 
words — and this, I think, is to have general 
conceptions. 

5. Having considered the sentiments of 
Bishop Berkeley on this subject, let us 
next attend to those of Mr Hume, as they 
are expressed Part I. § 7> " Treatise of 
Human Nature." He agrees perfectly 
with the Bishop, " That all general ideas 
are nothing but particular ones annexed to 
a certain term, which gives them a more 
extensive signification, and makes them 
recall, upon occasion, other individuals which 
are similar to them. [488] A particular 



410 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay v. 



idea becomes general, by being annexed to 
a general term ; that is, to a term, which, 
from a customary conjunction, has a rela- 
tion to many other particular ideas, and 
readily recalls them in the imagination. 
Abstract ideas are therefore in themselves 
individual, however they may become general 
in their representation. The image in the 
mind is only that of a particular object, 
though the application of it in our reason- 
ing be the same as if it was universal." 

Although Mr Hume looks upon this to 
be one of the greatest and most valuable 
discoveries that has been made of late years 
in the republic of letters, it appears to be 
no other than the opinion of the nominal- 
ists, about which so much dispute was 
held, from the beginning of the twelfth 
century down to the Reformation, and 
which was afterwards supported by Mr 
Hobbes. I shall briefly consider the argu- 
ments by which Mr Hume hopes to have 
put it beyond all doubt and controversy. 

First, He endeavours to prove, by three 
arguments, that it is utterly impossible to 
conceive any quantity or quality, without 
forming a precise notion of its degrees; 

This is indeed a great undertaking ; but, 
if he could prove it, it is not sufficient for 
his purpose — for two reasons. 

First, Because there are many attributes 
of things, besides quantity and quality ; and 
it is incumbent upon him to prove that it 
is impossible to conceive any attribute, 
without forming a precise notion of its 
degree. Each of the ten categories of 
Aristotle is a genus, and may be an attri- 
bute. And, if he should prove of two of 
them — to wit, quantity and quality — that 
there can be no general conception of them ; 
there remain eight behind, of which this 
must be proved. [489 J 

The other reason is, because, though it 
were impossible to conceive any quantity 
or quality, without forming a precise notion 
of its degree, it does not follow that it is 
impossible to have a general conception 
even of quantity and quality. The con- 
ception of a pound troy is the conception 
of a quantity, and of the precise degree of 
that quantity ; but it is an abstract general 
conception notwithstanding, because it may 
be the attribute of many individual bodies, 
and of many kinds of bodies. He ought, 
therefore, to have proved that we cannot 
conceive quantity or quality, or any other 
attribute, without joining it inseparably to 
some individual subject. 

This remains to be proved, which will be 
found no easy matter. For instance, I 
conceive what is meant by a Japanese as 
distinctly as what is meant by an English- 
man or a Frenchman. It is true, a Japan- 
ese is neither quantity nor quality, but it 
is an attribute common to every individual 



of a populous nation. I never saw an in- 
dividual of that nation ; and, if I can trust 
my consciousness, the general term does 
not lead me to imagine one individual of 
the sort as a representative of all others. 

Though Mr Hume, therefore, undertakes 
much, yet, if he could prove all he under- 
takes to prove, it would by no means be 
sufficient to shew that we have no abstract 
general conceptions. 

Passing this, let us attend to his argu- 
ments for proving this extraordinary posi- 
tion, that it is impossible to conceive any 
quantity or quality, without forming a pre- 
cise notion of its degree. 

The first argument is, that it is impossi- 
ble to distinguish things that are not ac- 
tually separable. " The precise length of 
a line is not different or distinguishable 
from the line." [490] 

I have before endeavoured to shew, that 
things inseparable in their nature may be 
distinguished in our conception. And we 
need go no farther to be convinced of this, 
than the instance here brought to prove 
the contrary. The precise length of a line, 
he says, is not distinguishable from the 
line. When I say, This is a line, I say and 
mean one thing. When I say, It is a line 
of three inches, I say and mean another 
thing. If this be not to distinguish the 
precise length of the line from the line, I 
know not what it is to distinguish. 

Second argument — " Every object of 
sense — that is, every impression — is an in- 
dividual, having its determinate degrees of 
quantity and quality. But whatever is 
true of the impression is true of the idea, 
as they differ in nothing but their strength 
and vivacity." 

The conclusion in this argument is, in- 
deed, justly drawn from the premises. If 
it be true that ideas differ in nothing from 
objects of sense, but in strength and viva- 
city, as it must be granted that all the ob- 
jects of sense are individuals, it will cer- 
tainly follow that all ideas are individuals. 
Granting, therefore, the justness of this 
conclusion, I beg leave to draw two other 
conclusions from the same premises, which 
will follow no less necessarily. 

First, If ideas differ from the objects of 
sense only in strength and vivacity, it will 
follow, that the idea of a lion is a lion of 
less strength and vivacity. And hence may 
arise a very important question, Whether 
the idea of a lion may not tear in pieces, 
and devour the ideas of sheep, oxen, and 
horses, and even of men, women, and 
children ? 

Secondly, If ideas differ only in strength 
and vivacity from the objects of sense, it 
will follow that objects merely conceived, 
are not ideas ; for such objects differ from 
the objects of sense in respects of a very 
[489, 490] 



VI.] 



OPINIONS ABOUT UNIVERSALS. 



411 



different nature from strength and vivacity. 
[491] Every object of sense must have a 
real existence, and time and place. But 
things merely conceived may neither have 
existence, nor time nor place ; and, there- 
fore, though there should be no abstract 
ideas, it does not follow that things abstract 
aud general may not be conceived. 

The third argument is this : — " It is a 
principle generally received in philosophy, 
that everything in nature is individual ; and 
that it is utterly absurd to suppose a tri- 
angle really existent which has no precise 
proportion of sides and angles. If this, 
therefore, be absurd in fact and reality, it 
must be absurd in idea, since nothing of 
which we can form a clear and distinct 
idea is absurd or impossible." 

I acknowledge it to be impossible that a 
triangle should really exist which has no 
precise proportion of sides and angles ; and 
impossible that any being should exist 
which is not an individual being ; for, I 
think, a being and an individual being 
mean the same thing : but that there can 
be no attributes common to many indivi- 
duals I do not acknowledge. Thus, to 
many figures that really exist it may be 
common that they are triangles ; and to 
many bodies that exist it may be common 
that they are fluid. Triangle and fluid are 
not beings, they are attributes of beings. 

As to the principle here assumed, that 
nothing of which we can form a clear and 
distinct idea is absurd or impossible, I refer 
to what was said upon it, chap. 3, Essay 
IV. It is evident that, in every mathema- 
tical demonstration, ad absurdum, of which 
kind almost one-half of mathematics con- 
sists, we are required to suppose, and, con- 
sequently, to conceive, a thing that is im- 
possible. From that supposition we reason, 
until we come to a conclusion that is not 
only impossible but absurd. From this we 
infer that the proposition supposed at first 
is impossible, and, therefore, that its con- 
tradictory is true. [492] 

As this is the nature of all demonstra- 
tions, ad absurdum, it is evident, (I do not 
say that we can have a clear and distiuct 
idea,) but that we can clearly and distinctly 
conceive things impossible. 

The rest of Mr Hume's discourse upon 
this subject is employed in explaining how 
an individual idea, annexed to a general 
term, may serve all the purposes in reason- 
ing which have been ascribed to abstract 
general ideas. 

" When we have found a resemblance 
among several objects that often occur to 
us, we apply the same name to all of them, 
whatever differences we may observe in the 
degrees of their quantity and quality, and 
whatever other differences may appear 
among them. After we have acquired a 
[491-493] 



custom of this kind, the hearing of that 
name revives the idea of one of these ob- 
jects, and makes the imagination conceive 
it, with all its circumstances and propor- 
tions." But, along with this idea, there is 
a readiness to survey any other of the indi- 
viduals to which the name belongs, and to 
observe that no conclusion be formed con- 
trary to any of them. If any such conclu- 
sion is formed, those individual ideas which 
contradict it immediately crowd in upon us, 
and make us perceive the falsehood of the 
proposition. If the mind suggests not al- 
ways these ideas upon occasion, it proceeds 
from some imperfection in its faculties ; 
and such a one as is often the source of 
false reasoning and sophistry. 

This is, in substance, the way in which 
he accounts for what he calls " the fore- 
going paradox, that some ideas are parti- 
cular in their nature, but general in their 
representation." Upon this account I shall 
make some remarks. [493] 

1. He allows that we find a resemblance 
among several objects, and such a resem- 
blance as leads us to apply the same name 
to all of them. This concession is suffi- 
cient to shew that we have general concep- 
tions. There can be no resemblance in 
objects that have no common attribute ; 
and, if there be attributes belonging in com- 
mon to several objects, and in man a fa- 
culty to observe and conceive these, and to 
give names to them, this is to have general 
conceptions. 

I believe, indeed, we may have an indis- 
tinct perception of resemblance without 
knowing wherein it lies. Thus, I may see 
a resemblance between one face and an- 
other, when I cannot distinctly say in what 
feature they resemble ; but, by analysing 
the two faces, and comparing feature with 
feature, I may form a distinct notion of 
that which is common to both. A painter, 
being accustomed to an analysis of this kind, 
would have formed a distinct notion of this 
resemblance at first sight ; to another man 
it may require some attention. 

There is, therefore, an indistinct notion 
of resemblance when we compare the objects 
only in gross : and this I believe brute ani- 
mals may have. There is also a distinct 
notion of resemblance when we analyse the 
objects into their different attributes, and 
perceive them to agree in some while they 
differ in others. It is in this case only that 
we give a name to the attributes wherein 
they agree, which must be a common name, 
because the thing signified by it is common. 
Thus, when I compare cubes of different 
matter, I perceive them to have this attri- 
bute in common, that they are compre- 
hended under six equal squares, and this 
attribute only is signified by applying the 
name of cube to them all. When I com- 






412 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay v. 



pare clean linen with snow, I perceive them 
to agree in colour ; and when I apply the 
name of white to both, this name signifies 
neither snow nor clean linen, but the attri- 
bute which is common to both. 

2. The author says, that when we have 
found a resemblance among several objects, 
we apply the same name to all of them. 
[494] 

It must here be observed, that there are 
two kinds of names which the author seems 
to confound, though they are very different 
in nature, and in the power they have in 
language. There are proper names, and 
there are common names or appellatives. 
The first are the names of individuals. The 
same proper name is never applied to 
several individuals on account of their simi- 
litude, because the very intention of a pro- 
per name is to distinguish one individual 
from all others ; and hence it is a maxim 
in grammar that proper names have no 
plural number. A proper name signifies 
nothing but the individual whose name it 
is ; and, when we apply it to the individual, 
we neither affirm nor deny anything con- 
cerning him. 

A common name or appellative is not the 
name of any individual, but a general term, 
signifying something that is or may be 
common to several individuals. Common 
names, therefore, signify common attri- 
butes. Thus, when I apply the name of 
son or brother to several persons, this sig- 
nifies and affirms that this attribute is 
common to all of them. 

From this, it is evident that the apply- 
ing the same name to several individuals 
on account of their resemblance, can, in 
consistence with grammar and common 
sense, mean nothing else than the express- 
ing, by a general term, something that is 
common to those individuals, and which, 
therefore, may be truly affirmed of them all. 

3. The author says, " It is certain that 
we form the idea of individuals whenever 
we use any general term. The word raises 
up an individual idea, and makes the ima- 
gination conceive it, with all its particular 
circumstances and proportions." 

This fact he takes a great deal of pains to 
account for, from the effect of custom. 
[495] 

But the fact should be ascertained before 
we take pains to account for it. I can see 
no reason to believe the fact ; and I think 
a farmer can talk of his sheep and his black 
cattle, without conceiving, in his imagina- 
tion, one individual, with all its circum- 
stances and proportions. If this be true, 
the whole of his theory of general ideas falls 



to the ground. To me it appears, that 
when a general term is well understood, it is 
only by accident if it suggest some indi- 
vidual of the kind ; but this effect is by no 
means constant. 

I understand perfectly what mathemati- 
cians call a line of the fifth order ; yet I 
never conceived in my imagination anyone 
of the kind hi all its circumstances and pro- 
portions. Sir Isaac Newton first formed a 
distinct general conception of lines of the 
third order ; and afterwards, by great labour 
and deep penetration, found out and de- 
scribed the particular species comprehended 
under that general term. According to Mr 
Hume's theory, he must first have been 
acquainted with the particulars, and then 
have learned by custom to apply one 
general name to all of them. 

The author observes, " That the idea of 
an equilateral triangle of an inch perpen- 
dicular, may serve us in talking of a figure, 
a rectilinear figure, a regular figure, a tri- 
angle, and an equilateral triangle." 

I answer, the man that uses these general 
terms either understands their meaning, 
or he does not. If he does not understand 
their meaning, all his talk about them will 
be found only without sense, and the par- 
ticular idea mentioned cannot enable him 
to speak of them with understanding. If 
he understands the meaning of the general 
terms, he will find no use for the particular 
idea. 

4. He tells us gravely, " That in a globe 
of white marble the figure and the colour 
are undistinguishable, and are in effect the 
same." [496] How foolish have mankind 
been to give different names, in all ages 
andinall languages, to things undistinguish- 
able, and in effect the same ? Henceforth, 
in all books of science and of entertainment, 
we may substitute figure for colour, and 
colour for figure. By this we shall make 
numberless curious discoveries, without 
danger of error. * [497] 



* The whole controversy of Nominalism and Con- 
ceptualisra is founded on the ambiguity of the terms 
employed. The opposite partus are substantially at 
one. Had our British philosophers been aware of 
the Leibnitzian distinction of Intuitive and Symboli- 
cal knowledge ; and had we, like the Germans, 
different terms, like Begriff w&Anschauung, to de- 
note different kinds of thought, there would have 
been as little difference of opinion in regard to the 
nature of general notions in this country as in the 
Empire. V\ ith us, Idea, Notion, Concqction, Ike. 
are confounded, or applied by different philosophers 
in different senses. 1 must put the reader on his 
guard against Dr Thomas Brown's speculations on 
this subject. His own doctrine of universals, in so 
far as it is peculiar, is self-c .ntradictory j and nothing 
can be more erroneous than his statement of the doc- 
trine held by others, especially by tfce Nominalists. 

[494-497] 



niAP. i."] 



OF JUDGMENT IN GENERAL. 



413 



ESSAY VI. 
OF JUDGMENT 



CHAPTER I. 

OF JUDGMENT IN GENERAL. 

Judging is an operation of the mind so 
familiar to every man who hath understand- 
ing, and its name is so common and so well 
understood, that it needs no definition. 

As it is impossible by a definition to give 
a notion of colour to a man who never saw 
colours ; so it is impossible by any defini- 
tion to give a distinct notion of judgment to 
a man who has not often judged, and who 
is not capable of reflecting attentively upon 
this act of his mind. The best use of a de- 
finition is to prompt him to that reflection ; 
and without it the best definition will be apt 
to mislead him. 

The definition commonly given of judg- 
ment, by the more ancient writers in logic, 
was, that it is an act of the mind, where! y 
ono thing is affirmed or denied of another. 
I believe this is as good a definition of it as 
can be given. Why I prefer it to some 
later definitions, will afterwards appear. 
"Without pretending to give any other. I 
shall make two remarks upon it, and then 
offer some general observations on this 
subject. [498] 

1. It is true that it is by affirmation or 
denial that we express our judgments ; but 
there may be judgment which is not ex- 
pressed. It is a solitary act of the mind, 
and the expression of it by affirmation or 
denial is not at all essential to it. It may 
be tacit, and not expressed. Nay, it is 
well known that men may judge contrary 
to what they affirm or deny ; the definition 
therefore must be understood of mental af- 
firmation or denial, which indeed is only 
another name for judgment. 

2. Affirmation and denial is very often 
the expression of testimony, which is a dif- 
ferent act of the mind, and ought to be 
distinguished from judgment. 

A judge asks of a witness what he knows 
of such a matter to which he was an eye 
or ear-witness. He answers, by affirming 
or denying something But his answer 
does not express his judgment; it is his 
testimony. Again, I ask a man his opinion 
in a matter of science or of criticism. His 
answer is not testimony ; it is the expres- 
sion of his judgment. 

Testimony is a social act, and it is essen 
[498, 499] 



tial to it to be expressed by words or signs. 
A tacit testimony is a contradiction : but 
there is no contradiction in a tacit judgment ; 
it is complete without being expressed. 

In testimony a man pledges his veracity 
for what he affirms ; so that a false testi- 
mony is a lie : but a wrong judgment is not 
a lie ; it is only an error. 

I believe, in all languages, testimony and 
judgment are expressed by the same form 
of speech. A proposition affirmative or 
negative, with a verb in what is called the 
indicative mood, expresses both. To dis- 
tinguish them by the form of speech, it 
would be necessary that verbs should have 
two indicative moods, one for testimony, 
and another to express judgment. [499] 
I know not that this is found in any lan- 
guage. And the reason is — not surely that 
the vulgar cannot distinguish the two, for 
every man knows the difference between a 
lie and an error of judgment — but that, from 
the matter and circumstances, we can easily 
see whether a man intends to give his tes- 
timony, or barely to express his judgment. 

Although men must have judged in many 
cases before tribunals of justice were 
erected, yet it is very probable that there 
were tribunals before men began to specu- 
late about judgment, and that the word may 
be borrowed from the practice of tribunals. 
As a judge, after taking the proper evidence, 
passes sentence in a cause, and that sent- 
ence is called his judgment, so the mind, 
with regard to whatever is true or false, 
passes sentence, or determines according to 
the evidence that appears. Some kinds of 
evidence leave no room for doubt. Sent- 
ence is passed immediately, without seek- 
ing or hearing any contrary evidence, 
because the thing is certain and notorious. 
In other cases, there is room for weighing 
evidence on both sides, before sentence is 
passed. The analogy between a tribunal 
of justice, and this inward tribunal of the 
mind, is too obvious to escape the notice of 
any man who ever appeared before a judge. 
And it is probable that the word judgment, 
as well as'many other words we use in speak- 
ing of this operation of mind, are grounded 
on this analogy. 

Having premised these things, that it 
may be clearly understood what I mean by 
judgment, I proceed to make some general 
observations concerning it. 



14 



OX THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[ess.ay VI. 



First, Judgment is an act of the mind, 
specifically different from simple apprehen- 
sion, or the bare conception of a thing.* 
It would be unnecessary to observe this, if 
some philosophers had not been led by their 
theories to a contrary opinion. [500] 

Although there can be no judgment with- 
out a conception of the things about which 
we judge, yet conception may be without any 
judgment. -f* Judgment can be expressed 
by a proposition only, and a proposition is 
a complete sentence ; but simple apprehen- 
sion may be expressed by a word or words, 
which make no complete sentence. When 
simple apprehension is employed about a 
proposition, every man knows that it is one 
thing to apprehend a proposition — that is, 
to conceive what it means — but it is quite 
another thing to judge it to be true or false. 

It is self-evident that every judgment 
must be either true or false \ but simple 
apprehension, or conception, can neither be 
true nor false, as was shewn before. 

One judgment may be contradictor}' to 
another ; and it is impossible for a man to 
have two judgments at the same time, which 
he perceives to be contradictory. But con- 
tradictory propositions may be conceived^ 
at the same time without any difficulty. 
That the sun is greater than the earth, and 
that the sun is not greater than the earth, 
are contradictory propositions. He that 
apprehends the meaning of one, apprehends 
the meaning of both. But it is impossible 
for him to judge both to be true at the same 
time. He knows that, if the one is true, 
the other must be false. For these reasons, 
I hold it to be certain that judgment and 
simple apprehension are acts of the mind 
specifically different* 

Secondly, There are notions or ideas that 
ought to be referred to the faculty of judg- 
ment as their source ; because, if we had 
not that faculty, they could not enter into 
our minds; and to those that have that 
faculty, and are capable of reflecting upon 
its operations, they are obvious and familiar. 

Among these we may reckon the notion 
of judgment itself ; the notions of a propos- 
ition — of its subject, predicate, and copula ; 
of affirmation and negation, of true and 
false ; of knowledge, belief, disbelief, opi- 
nion, assent, evidence. From no source 
could we acquire these notions, but from 
reflecting upon our judgments. Relations 
of things make one great class of our notions 
or ideas ; and we cannot have the idea of 
any relation without some exercise of judg- 
ment, as will appear afterwards. [501] 
Thirdly, In persons come to years of 

* Which, however, implies a judgment affirming 
its subjective reality— an existential judgment.— H. 

t See last note, and above, p. *43, a, note *. and p. 
37 5, a, notet— H. • « 

+ See above, p. 377, b, note.— H 



understanding, judgment necessarily accom- 
panies all sensation, perception by the 
senses, consciousness, and memory, but not 
conception.* 

I restrict this to persons come to the years 
of understanding, because it may be a ques- 
tion, whether infants, in the first period of 
life, have any judgment or belief at all.* 
The same question may be put with regard 
to brutes and some idiots. This question 
is foreign to the present subject ; and I say 
nothing here about it, but speak only of 
persons who have the exercise of judg- 
ment. 

In them it is evident that a man who 
feels pain, judges and believes that he is 
really pained. The man who perceives an 
object, believes that it exists, and is what 
he distinctly perceives it to be ; nor is it in 
his power to avoid such judgment. And 
the like may be said of memory, and of 
consciousness. Whether judgment ought 
to be called a necessary concomitant of 
these operations, or rather a part or in- 
gredient of them, I do not dispute ; but it 
is certain that all of them are accompanied 
with a determination that something is 
true or false, and a consequent belief. If 
this determination be not judgment, it is 
an operation that has got no name ; for it 
is not simple apprehension, neither is it 
reasoning ; it is a mental affirmation or 
negation ; it may be expressed by a propo- 
sition affirmative or negative, and it is 
accompanied with the firmest belief. These 
are the characteristics of judgment ; and I 
must call it judgment, till I can find another 
name to it. 

The judgments we form are either of 
things necessary, or of things contingent. 
That three times three is nine, that the 
whole is greater than a part, are judg- 
ments about things necessary. [502] Our 
assent to such necessary propositions is not 
grounded upon any operation of sense, of 
memory, or of consciousness, nor does it 
require their concurrence ; it is unaccom- 
panied by any other operation but that of 
conception, which must accompany all judg- 
ment ; we may therefore call this judgment 
of things necessary pure judgment. Our 
judgment of things contingent must always 
rest upon some other operation of the mind, 
such as sense, or memory, or consciousness, 
or credit in testimony, which is itself 
grounded upon sense. 

That I now write upon a table covered 
with green cloth, is a contingent event, 
which I judge to be most undoubtedly true. 
My judgment is grounded upon my percep- 
tion, and is a necessary concomitant or in- 
gredient of my perception. That I dined 



* In so far as there can be Consciousness, there 
must be Judgment— H. 

[500-502 1 



I.] 



OF JUDGMENT IN GENERAL. 



415 



with such a company yesterday, I judge to 
be true, because I remember it ; and my 
judgment necessarily goes along with this 
remembrance, or makes a part of it. 

There are many forms of speech in com- 
mon language which shew that the senses, 
memory and consciousness, are considered 
as judging faculties. We say that a man 
judges of colours by his eye, of sounds by 
his ear. We speak of the evidence of sense, 
the evidence of memory, the evidence of 
consciousness. Evidence is the ground of 
judgment ; and when we see evidence, it is 
impossible not to judge. 

When we speak of seeing or remember- 
ing anything, we, indeed, hardly ever add 
that we judge it to be true. But the rea- 
son of this appears to be, that such an 
addition would be mere superfluity of 
speech, because every one knows that 
what I see or remember, I must judge to 
be true, and cannot do otherwise. 

And, for the same reason, in speaking of 
anything that is self-evident or strictly de- 
monstrated, we do not say that we judge 
it to be true. This would be superfluity 
of speech, because every man knows th^.t we 
must judge that to be true which we hold 
self-evident or demonstrated. [503] 

When you say you saw such a thing, or 
that you distinctly remember it, or when 
you say of any proposition that it is self- 
evident, or strictly demonstrated, it would 
be ridiculous after this to ask whether you 
judge it to be true ; nor would it be less 
ridiculous in you to inform us that you do. 
It would be a superfluity of speech of the 
same kind as if, not content with saying 
that you saw such an object, you should 
add that you saw it with your eyes. 

There is, therefore, good reason why, in 
speaking or writing, judgment should not 
be expressly mentioned, when all men know 
it to be necessarily implied ; that is, when 
there can be no doubt. In such cases, we 
barely mention the evidence. But when 
the evidence mentioned leaves room for 
doubt, then, without any superfluity or tau- 
tology, we say we judge the thing to be so, 
because this is not implied in what was said 
before. A woman with child never says, 
that, going such a journey, she carried her 
child along with her. We know that, while 
it is in her womb, she must carry it along 
with her. There are some operations of 
mind that may be said to carry judgment 
in their womb, and can no more leave it 
behind them than the pregnant woman can 
leave her child. Therefore, in speaking of 
such operations, it is not expressed. 

Perhaps this manner of speaking may 
have led philosophers into the opinion that, 
in perception by the senses, in memory, 
and in consciousness, there is no judgment 
at all. Because it is not mentioned in 
[503-505] 



speaking of these faculties, they conclude 
that it does not accompany them ; that they 
are only different modes of simple appre- 
hension, or of acquiring ideas ; and that it 
is no part of their office to judge. [504] 

I apprehend the same cause has led Mr 
Locke into a notion of judgment which I 
take to be peculiar to him. He thinks that 
the mind has two faculties conversant about 
truth and falsehood. Fhst, knowledge; 
and, secondly, judgment. In the first, the 
perception of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of the ideas is certain. In the second, 
it is not certain, but probable only. 

According to this notion of judgment, it 
is not by judgment that I perceive that two 
and three make five ; it is by the faculty of 
knowledge. I apprehend there can be no 
kaowledge without judgment, though there 
may be judgment without that certainty 
which we commonly call knowledge. 

Mr Locke, in another place of his Essay, 
tells us, " That the notice we have by our 
senses of the existence of things without us, 
though not altogether so certain as our in- 
tuitive knowledge, or the deductions of our 
reason about abstract ideas, yet is an as- 
surance that deserves the name of know- 
ledge." I think, by this account of it, and 
by his definitions before given of knowledge 
and judgment, it deserves as well the name 
of judgment. 

That I may avoid disputes about the 
meaning of words, I wish the reader to un- 
derstand, that I give the name of judgment 
to every determination of the mind con- 
cerning what is true or what is false. This, 
I think, is what logicians, from the days of 
Aristotle, have called judgment. Whether 
it be called one faculty, as I think it has 
always been, or whether a philosopher 
chooses to split it into two, seems not very 
material. And, if it be granted that, by our 
senses, our memory, and consciousness, we 
not only have ideas or simple apprehen- 
sions, but form determinations concerning 
what is true and what is false — whether 
these determinations ought to be called 
knowledge or judgment, is of small moment. 
[505] 

The judgments grounded upon the evi- 
dence of sense, of memory, and of conscious- 
ness, put all men upon a level. The phi- 
losopher, with regard to these, has no pre- 
rogative above the illiterate, or even above 
the savage. 

Their reliance upon the testimony of 
these faculties is as firm and as well 
grounded as his. His superiority is in 
judgments of another kind — in judgments 
about things abstract and necessary. And 
he is unwilling to give the name of judg- 
ment to that wherein the most ignorant 
and unimproved of the species are his 
equals. 



416 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay vt„ 



But philosophers have never been able 
to give any definition of judgment which 
does not apply to the determinations of 
our senses, our memory, and conscious- 
ness, nor any definition of simple appre- 
hension which can comprehend those deter- 
minations. 

Our judgments of this kind are purely 
the gift of Nature, nor do they admit of 
improvement by culture. The memory of 
one man may be more tenacious than that 
of another ; but both rely with equal assur- 
ance upon what they distinctly remember. 
One man's sight may be more acute, or his 
feeling more delicate, than that of another; 
but both give equal credit to the distinct 
testimony of their sight and touch. 

And, as we have this belief by the con- 
stitution of our nature, without any effort 
of our own, so no effort of ours can over- 
turn it. 

The sceptic may perhaps persuade him- 
self, in general, that he has no . ground to 
believe his senses or his memory : but, in 
particular cases that are interesting, his 
disbelief vanishes, and he finds himself 
under a necessity of believing both. [506] 

These judgments may, in the strictest 
sense, be called judgments of nature. Na- 
ture has subjected us to them, whether we 
will or not. They are neither got, nor can 
they be lost by any use or abuse of our 
faculties ; and it is evidently necessary for 
our preservation that it should be so. For, 
if belief in our senses and in our memory 
were to be learned by culture, the race of 
men would perish before they learned this 
lesson. It is necessary to all men for their 
being and preservation, and therefore is 
unconditionally given to all men by the 
Author of Nature. 

I acknowledge that, if we were to rest 
in those judgments of Nature of which we 
now speak, without building others upon 
them, they would not entitle us to the deno- 
mination of reasonable beings. But yet 
they ought not to be despised, for they are 
the foundation upon which the grand super- 
structure of human knowledge must be 
raised. And, as in other superstructures 
the foundation is commonly overlooked, so 
it has been in this. The more sublime 
attainments of the human mind have at- 
tracted the attention of philosophers, while 
they have bestowed but a careless glance 
upon the humble foundation on which the 
whole fabric rests. 

A fourth observation is, that some exer- 
cise of judgment is necessary in the forma- 
tion of all abstract and general conceptions, 
whether more simple or more complex ; in 
dividing, in defining, and, in general, in 
forming all clear and distinct conceptions 
of things, which are the only fit materials 
of reasoning. 



These operations are allied to each other, 
and therefore I bring them under one ob- 
servation. They are more allied to cur 
rational nature than those mentioned in the 
last observation, and therefore are consi- 
dered by themselves. 

That I may not be mistaken, it may be 
observed that I do not say that abstract 
notions, or other accurate notions of things, 
after they have been formed, cannot be 
barely conceived without any exercise of 
judgment about them. I doubt not that 
they may : but what I say is, that, in their 
formation in the mind at first, there must 
be some exercise of judgment. [507] 

It is impossible to distinguish the different 
attributes belonging to the same subject, 
without judging that they are really different 
and distinguishable, and that they have that 
relation to the subject which logicians ex- 
press, by saying that they may be predicated 
of it. We cannot generalise, without judg- 
ing that the same attribute does or may be- 
long to many individuals. It has been 
shewn that our simplest general notions 
are formed by these two operations of dis- 
tinguishing and generalising ; judgment 
therefore is exercised in forming the simplest 
general notions. 

In those that are more complex, and 
which have been shewn to be formed by 
combining the more simple, there is another 
act of the judgment required ; for such 
combinations are not made at random, but 
for an end ; and judgment is employed in 
fitting them to that end. We form complex 
general notions for conveniency of arrang- 
ing our thoughts in discourse and reasoning ; 
and, therefore, of an infinite number of com- 
binations that might be formed, we choose 
only those that are useful and necessary. 

That judgment must be employed in 
dividing as well as in distinguishing, ap- 
pears evident. It is one thing to divide a 
subject properly, another to cut it in pieces. 
Hocnon est divider e, sed fr anger e rem, said 
Cicero, when he censured an improper 
division of Epicurus. Reason has discovered 
rules of division, which have been known 
to logicians more than two thousand years. 

There are rules likewise of definition of 
no less antiquity and authority. A man 
may no doubt divide or define properly with- 
out attending to the rules, or even without 
knowing them. But this can only be when 
he has judgment to perceive that to be right 
in a particular case, which the rule de- 
termines to be right in all cases. 

I add in general, that, without some de- 
gree of judgment, we can form no accurate 
aud distinct notions of things ; so that one 
province of judgment is, to aid us in form- 
ing clear and distinct conceptions of things, 
which are the only fit materials for reason- 
ing. [508] 

[506-508] 






CHAP, 



«•] 



OF JUDGMENT IN GENERAL. 



417 



This will probably appear to be a paradox 
to philosophers, who have always considered 
the formation of ideas of every kind as be- 
longing to simple apprehension ; and that 
the sole province of judgment is to put them 
together in affirmative or negative proposi- 
tions ; and therefore it requires some con- 
firmation. 

Fin-t, I think it necessarily follows, from 
what has been already said in this observa- 
tion. For if, without some degree of judg- 
ment, a man can neither distinguish, nor 
divide, nor define, nor form any general 
notion, simple or eomplex, he surely, with- 
out some degree of judgment, cannot have 
in his mind the materials necessary to 
reasoning. 

There cannot be any proposition in lan- 
guage which does not involve some general 
conception. The proposition, that I exist, 
which Des Cartes thought the first of all 
truths, and the foundation of all knowledge, 
cannot be conceived without the conception 
of existence, one of the most abstract general 
conceptions A man cannot believe his own 
existence, or the existence of anything he 
sees or remembers, until he has so much 
judgment as to distinguish things that really 
exist from things which are only conceived. 
He sees a man six feet high ; he conceives 
a man sixty feet high : he judges the first 
object to exist, because he sees it ; the 
second he does not judge to exist, because 
he only conceives it. Now, I would ask, 
Whether he can attribute existence to the 
first object, and not to the second, without 
knowing what existence means ? It is im- 
possible. 

How early the notion of existence enters 
into the mind, I cannot determine ; but it 
must certainly be in the mind as soon as 
we ean affirm of anything, with understand- 
ing, that it exists. [509] 

In every other proposition, the predicate, 
at least, must be a general notion — a pre- 
dicable and an universal being one and the 
same. Besides this, every proposition either 
affirms or denies. And no man can have 
a distinct conception of a proposition, who 
does not understand distinctly the meaning 
of affirming or denying. But these are very 
general conceptions, and, as was before 
observed, are derived from judgment, as 
their source and origin. 

I am sensible that a strong objection may 
be made to this reasoning, and that it may 
seem to lead to an absurdity or a contra- 
diction. It may be said, that every judg- 
ment is a mental affirmation or negation. 
If, therefore, some previous exercise of 
judgment be necessary to understand what 
is meant by affirmation or negation, the 
exercise of judgment must go before any 
judgment which is absurd. 

In like manner, every judgment may be 
[509,510] 



expressed by a proposition, and a proposi- 
tion must be conceived before we can judge 
of it. If, therefore, we cannot conceive the 
meaning of a proposition without a previous 
exercise of judgment, it follows that judg- 
ment must be previous to the conception of 
any proposition, and at the same time that 
the conception of a proposition must be pre- 
vious to all judgment, which is a contra- 
diction. 

The reader may please to observe, that 
I have limited what I have said to distinct 
conception, and some degree of judgment ; 
and it is by this means I hope to avoid this 
labyrinth of absurdity and contradiction. 
The faculties of conception and judgment 
have an infancy and a maturity as man has. 
What I have said is limited to their mature 
state. I believe in their infant state they 
are very weak and indistinct ; and that, by 
imperceptible degrees, they grow to ma- 
turity, each giving aid to the other, and 
receiving aid from it. But which of them 
first began this friendly intercourse, is be- 
yond my ability to determine. It is like 
the question concerning the bird and the 
egg. [510] 

In the present state of things, it is true 
that every bird comes from an egg, and 
every egg from a bird ; and each may be 
said to be previous to the other. But, if 
we go back to the origin of things, there 
must have been some bird that did not 
come from any egg, or some egg that did 
not come from any bird. 

In like manner, in the mature state of 
man, distinct conception of a proposition 
supposes some previous exercise of judg- 
ment, and distinct judgment supposes dis- 
tinct conception. Each may truly be said 
to come from the other, as the bird from 
the egg, and the egg from the bird. But, 
if we trace back this succession to its origin 
— that is, to the first proposition that was 
ever conceived by the man, and the first 
judgment he ever formed — I determine no- 
thing about them, nor do I know in what 
order, or how, they were produced, any 
more than how the bones grow in the 
womb of her that is with child. 

The first exercise of these faculties of 
conception and judgment is hid, like the 
sources of the Nile, in an unknown region. 

The necessity of some degree of judg- 
ment to clear and distinct conceptions of 
things, may, I think, be illustrated by this 
similitude. 

An artist, suppose a carpenter, cannot 
work in his art without tools, and these 
tools must be made by art. The exercise 
of the art, therefore, is necessary to make 
the tools, and the tools are necessary to the 
exercise of the art. There is the same 
appearance of contradiction, as in what I 
have advanced concerning the necessity of 
2 E 



418 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



some degree of judgment, in order to form 
clear and distinct conceptions of things. 
These are the tools we must use in judging 
and in reasoning, and without them must 
make very bungling work ; yet these tools 
cannot be made without some exercise of 
judgment [511] 

The necessity of some degree of judg- 
ment in forming accurate and distinct no- 
tions of things will farther appear, if we 
consider attentively what notions we can 
form, without any aid of judgment, of the 
objects of sense, of the operations of our 
own minds, or of the relations of things. 

To begin with the objects of sense. It 
is acknowledged, on all hands, that the first 
notions we have of sensible objects are got 
by the external senses only, and probably 
before judgment is brought forth ; but these 
first notions are neither simple, nor are 
they accurate and distinct : they are gross 
and indistinct, and, like the chaos, a rudis 
indigestaque moles. Before we can have 
any distinct notion of this mass, it must be 
analysed ; the heterogeneous parts must be 
separated in our conception, and the simple 
elements, which before lay hid in the com- 
mon mass, must first be distinguished, and 
then put together into one whole. 

In this way it is that we form distinct 
notions even of the objects of sense ; but 
this process of analysis and composition, by 
habit, becomes so easy, and is performed 
so readily, that we are apt to overlook it, 
and to impute the distinct notion we have 
formed of the object to the senses alone ; 
and this we are the more prone to do 
because, when once we have distinguished 
the sensible qualities of the object from 
one another, the sense gives testimony to 
each of them. 

You perceive, for instance, an object 
white, round, and a foot in diameter. I 
grant that you perceive all these attributes 
of the object by sense ; but, if you had not 
been able to distinguish the colour from 
the figure, and both from the magnitude, 
your senses would only have given you one 
complex and confused notion of all these 
mingled together. 

A man who is able to say with under- 
standing, or to determine in his own mind, 
that this object is white, must have distin- 
guished whiteness from other attributes. 
If he has not made this distinction, he does 
not understand what he says. [512] 

Suppose a cube of brass to be presented 
at the same time to a child of a year old 
and to a man. The regularity of the figure 
will attract the attention of both. Both 
have the senses of sight and of touch in 
equal perfection ; and, therefore, if any- 
thing be discovered in this object by the 
man, which cannot be discovered by the 
child, it must be owing, not to the senses, 



but to some other faculty which the child 
has not yet attained. 

First, then, the man can easily distin- 
guish the body from the surface which 
terminates it ; this the child cannot do. 
Secondly, The man can perceive that this 
surface is made up of six planes of the same 
figure and magnitude ; the child cannot 
discover this. Thirdly, The man perceives 
that each of these planes has four equal 
sides and four equal angles ; and that the 
opposite sides of each plane and the oppo- 
site planes are parallel. 

It will surely be allowed, that a man of 
ordinary judgment may observe all this in 
a cube which he makes an object of con- 
templation, and takes time to consider ; 
that he may give the name of a square to 
a plane terminated by four equal sides and 
four equal angles ; and the name of a cube 
to a solid terminated by six equal squares •. 
all this is nothing else but analysing the 
figure of the object presented to his senses 
into its simplest elements, and again com- 
pounding it of those elements. 

By this analysis and composition two 
effects are produced. First, From the one 
complex object which his senses presented, 
though one of the most simple the senses 
can present, he educes many simple and 
distinct notions of right lines, angles, plain 
surface, solid, equality, parallelism ; notions 
which the child has not yet faculties to 
attain. Secondly, When he considers the 
cube as compounded of these elements, put 
together in a certain order, he has then, 
and not before, a distinct and scientific 
notion of a cube. The child neither con- 
ceives those elements, nor in what order 
they must be put together in order to make 
a cube ; and, therefore, has no accurate 
notion of a cube which can make it a sub- 
ject of reasoning. [513] 

Whence I think we may conclude, that 
the notion which we have from the senses 
alone, even of the simplest objects of sense, 
is indistinct and incapable of being either 
described or reasoned upon, until it is ana- 
lysed into its simple elements, and con- 
sidered as compounded of those elements. 

If we should apply this reasoning to more 
complex objects of sense, the conclusion 
would be still more evident. A dog may be 
taught to turn a jack, but he can never be 
taught to have a distinct notion of a jack. 
He sees every part as well as a man ; but 
the relation of the parts to one another 
and to the whole, he has not judgment to 
comprehend. 

A distinct notion of an object, even of 
sense, is never got in an instant ; but the 
sense performs its office in an instant. Time 
is not required to see it better, but to analyse 
it, to distinguish the different parts, and their 
relation to one another and to the whole. 
[511-513] 



CHAP. I.] 



OF JUDGMENT IN GENERAL. 



419 



Hence it is that, when any vehement 
passion or emotion hinders the cool applica- 
tion of judgment, we get no distinct notion 
of an object, even though the sense be long 
directed to it. A man who is put into a 
panic, by thinking he sees a ghost, may 
stare at it long without having any distinct 
notion of it ; it is his understanding, and 
not his sense, that is disturbed by his horror. 
If he can lay that aside, judgment immedi- 
ately enters upon its office, and examines 
the length and breadth, the colour, and 
figure, and distance of the object. Of these, 
while his panic lasted, he had no distinct 
notion, though his eyes were open all the 
time. 

When the eye of sense is open, but that 
of judgment shut by a panic, or any violent 
emotion that engrosses the mind, we see 
things confusedly, and probably much in the 
same manner that brutes and perfect idiots 
do, and infants before the use of judgment. 
[514] 

There are, therefore, notions of the objects 
of sense which are gross and indistinct, and 
there are others that are distinct and scienti- 
fic. The former may be got from the senses 
alone, but the latter cannot be obtained with- 
out some degree of judgment. 

The clear and accurate notions which 
geometry presents to us of a point, a right 
line, an angle, a square, a circle, of ratios 
direct and inverse, and others of that kind, 
can find no admittance into a mind that has 
not some degree of judgment. They are 
not properly ideas of the senses, nor are 
they got by compounding ideas of the 
senses, but by analysing the ideas or no- 
tions we get by the senses into their simplest 
elements, and again combining these ele- 
ments into various accurate and elegant 
forms, which the senses never did nor can 
exhibit. 

Had Mr Hume attended duly to this, it 
ought to have prevented a very bold attempt, 
which he has prosecuted through fourteen 
pages of his " Treatise of Human Nature," 
to prove that geometry is founded upon ideas 
that are not exact, and axioms that are not 
precisely true. 

A mathematician might be tempted to 
think that the man who seriously under- 
takes this has no great acquaintance with 
geometry ; but I apprehend it is to be im- 
puted to another cause, to a zeal for his own 
system. We see that even men of genius 
may be drawn into strange paradoxes, by 
an attachment to a favourite idol of the 
understanding, when it demands so costly a 
sacrifice. 

We Protestants think that the devotees 
of the Roman Church pay no small tribute 
to her authority when they renounce their 
five senses in obedience to her decrees. Mr 
Hume's devotion to his system carries him 
1 514-516"] 



even to trample upon mathematical demon- 
stration. [515] 

The fundamental articles of his system 
are, that all the perceptions of the human 
mind are either impressions or ideas, and 
that ideas are only faint copies of impres- 
sions. The idea of a right line, therefore, is 
only a faint copy of some line that has been 
seen, or felt by touch ; and the faint copy 
cannot be more perfect than the original. 
Now of such right lines, it is evident that 
the axioms of geometry are not precisely 
true ; for two lines that are straight to our 
sight or touch may include a space, or they 
may meet in more points than one. If, 
therefore, we cannot form any notion of a 
straight line more accurate than that which 
we have from the senses of sight and touch, 
geometry has no solid foundation. If, on 
the other hand, the geometrical axioms are 
precisely true, the idea of a right line is not 
copied from any impression of sight or touch, 
but must have a different origin and a more 
perfect standard. 

As the geometrician, by reflecting only 
upon the extension and figure of matter, 
forms a set of notions more accurate and 
scientific than any which the senses exhi- 
bit, so the natural philosopher, reflecting 
upon other attributes of matter, forms 
another set, such as those of density, quan- 
tity of matter, velocity, momentum, fluidity, 
elasticity, centres of gravity, and of oscilla- 
tion. These notions are accurate and 
scientific ; but they cannot enter into a 
mind that has not some degree of judg- 
ment, nor can we make them intelligible to 
children, until they have some ripeness of 
understanding. 

In navigation, the notions of latitude, 
longitude, course, leeway, cannot be made 
intelligible to children ; and so it is with 
regard to the terms of every science, and 
of every art about which we can reason. 
They have had their five senses as perfect 
as men for years before they are capable 
of distinguishing, comparing, and perceiv- 
ing the relations of things, so as to be able 
to form such notions. They acquire the 
intellectual powers by a slow progress, and 
by imperceptible degrees ; and by means 
of them, learn to form distinct and accurate 
notions of things, which the senses could 
never have imparted. [516] 

Having said so much of the notions we 
get from the senses alone of the objects of 
sense, let us next consider what notions we 
can have from consciousness alone of the 
operations of our minds. 

Mr Locke very properly calls conscious- 
ness an internal sense. It gives the like 
immediate knowledge of things in the mind — 
that is, of our own thoughts and feelings — 
as the senses give us of things external. 
There is this difference, however, that an 
2 K 2 



420 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



external object may be at rest, and the 
sense may be employed about it for some 
time. But the objects of consciousness 
are never at rest : the stream of thought 
flows like a river, without stopping a mo- 
ment ; the whole train of thought passes in 
succession under the eye of consciousness, 
which is always employed about the present. 
But is it consciousness that analyses com- 
plex operations, distinguishes their different 
ingredients, and combines them in distinct 
parcels under general names ? This surely 
is not the work of consciousness, nor can it 
be performed without reflection,* recollect- 
ing and judging of what we were conscious 
of, and distinctly remember. This reflec- 
tion does not appear in children. Of all 
the powers of the mind, it seems to be of 
the latest growth, whereas consciousness is 
coeval with the earliest. *t* 

Consciousness, being a kind of internal 
sense, can no more give us distinct and 
accurate notions of the operations of our 
minds, than the external senses can give 
of external objects. Reflection upon the 
operations of our minds is the same kind of 
operation with that by which we form dis- 
tinct notions of external objects. They 
differ not in their nature, but in this only, 
that one is employed about external, and 
the other about internal objects ; and both 
may, with equal propriety, be called reflec- 
tion. [517] 

Mr Locke has restricted the word reflec- 



* See above, p. 2 J 2, a, note *.— H. 

t See above, p. 239, b.— As a corollary of this truth, 
Mr Stewart makes the following observations, in 
which he is supported by every competent authority 
in education. The two northern universities have 
long withdrawn themselves from the reproach of 
placing Physics last in their curriculum of arts. In 
that of Edinburgh, no order is prescrnVd; but in St 
Andrew's and Glasgow, the class of Physics still stands 
after those of Mental Philosophy. This absurdity is, 
it is to be observed, altogether of a modern intro- 
duction For, when our Scottish universities were 
founded, and long after, the philosophy of mind was 
taught by the Professor of Physics. " I apprehend," 
says Mr Stewart, "that the study of the mind should 
form the last branch of the education of youth ; an 
order which nature herself seems to point out, by 
what I have already remarked with respect to the 
developement of our faculties. After the under, 
standing is well stored with particular facts, and 
has been conversant with particular scientific pur. 
suits, it will be enabled to speculate concerning its 
own powers with additional advai tage, and will run 
no hazard in indulging too far in such inquiries. 
Nothing can be more absurd, on this as well as on 
many other accounts, than the common practice 
which is followed in our universities, [in some only,] 
of beginning a course of philosophical education with 
the study of Logic. If this order were completely re- 
versed ; and if the study of Logic were delayed till 
after the mind of "he student was well stored with 
particular facts in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural 
and Civil History, his attention might be led with 
the most important advantage, and without any dan- 
ger to his po'-ver of observation, to an examination 
of his own faculties, which, besides opening to him 
a new and pleasing field of speculation, would enable 
him to form an estimate of his own powers, of the 
acquisitions he has made, of the habits he has formed, 
and of the farther improvements of which his mind 
is susceptible."— H. 



tion to that which is employed about the 
operations of our minds, without any 
authority, as I think, from custom, the 
arbiter of language. For, surely, I may 
reflect upon what I have seen or heard, as 
well as upon what I have thought.* The 
word, in its proper and common meaning, 
is equally applicable to objects of sense, 
and to objects of consciousness. -|- He has 
likewise confounded reflection with con- 
sciousness, and seems not to have been 
aware that they are different powers, and 
appear at very different periods of life % 

If that eminent philosopher had been 
aware of these mistakes about the meaning 
of the word reflection, he would, I think, 
have seen that, as it is by reflection upon 
the operations of our own minds that we 
can form any distinct and accurate notions 
of them, and not by consciousness without 
reflection, so it is by reflection upon the 
objects of sense, and not by the senses 
without reflection, that we can form dis- 
tinct notions of them. Reflection upon any- 
thing, whether external or internal, makes 
it an object of our intellectual powers, by 
which we survey it on all sides, and form 
such judgments about it as appear to be 
just and true. 

I proposed, in the third place, to consi- 
der our notions of the relations of things : 
and here I think, that, without judg- 
ment, we cannot have any notion of rela- 
tions. 

There are two ways in which we get the 
notion of relations. The first is, by com- 
paring the related objects, when we have 
before had the conception of both. By this 
comparison, we perceive the relation, either 
immediately, or by a process of reasoning. 
That my foot is longer than my finger, 1 
perceive immediately ; and that three is 
the half of six. This immediate perception 
is immediate and intuitive judgment. That 
the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle 
are equal, I perceive by a process of reason- 
ing, in which it will be acknowledged there 
is judgment. 

Another way in which we get the notion 
of relations (which seems not to have occur- 
red to Mr Locke) is, when, by attention to 
one of the related objects, we perceive or 
judge that it must, from its nature, have a 
certain relation to something else, which 
before, perhaps, we never thought of; and 
thus our attention to one of the related ob- 



* See note before, last, arid note at p. 347, b.— H. 

t Mr Stewart makes a curious mistarement of the 
meaning attached by Reid to the word Reflection, if 
this passage and others are taken into account. — See 
Elements* I. p. 106, note f-— H. 

% Consciousness and Reflection cannot be analysed 
into different powers. Reflection is only, in Locke's 
meaning of the word, (and this is the more correct,) 
Consciousness, concentrated by an act of Will on the 
phEenomena of mind— i. e., internal Attention ; in 
Reid's, what is it but Attention in general ?— H. 

[517] 



■] 



OF COMMON SENSE. 



42J 



jects produces the notion of a correlate, and 
of a certain relation between them. [518] 

Thus, when I attend to colour, figure, 
weight, I cannot help judging these to be 
qualities which cannot exist without a sub- 
ject ; that is, something which is coloured, 
figured, heavy. If I had not perceived such 
things to be qualities, I should never have 
had any notion of their subject, or of their 
relation to it. 

By attending to the operations of think- 
ing, memory, reasoning, we perceive or 
judge that there must be something which 
thinks, remembers, and reasons, which we 
call the mind. When we attend to any 
change that happens in Nature, judgment 
informs us that there must be a cause of 
this change, which had power to produce 
it ; and thus we get the notions of cause 
and effect, and of the relation between 
them. When we attend to body, we per- 
ceive that it cannot exist without space ; 
hence we get the notion of space, (which is 
neither an object of sense nor of conscious- 
ness,) and of the relation which bodies 
have to a certain portion of unlimited space, 
as their place. 

I apprehend, therefore, that all our no- 
tions of relations may more properly be 
ascribed to judgment as their source and 
origin, than to any other power of the 
mind. We must first perceive relations 
by our judgment, before we can conceive 
them without judging of them ; as we must 
first perceive colours by sight, before we 
can conceive them without seeing them. I 
think Mr Locke, when he comes to speak 
of the ideas of relations, does not say that 
they are ideas of sensation or reflection, 
but only that they terminate in, and are 
concerned about, ideas of sensation or re- 
flection. [519] 

The notions of unity and number are so 
abstract, that it is impossible they should 
enter into the mind until it has some degree 
of judgment. We see with what difficulty, 
and how slowly, children learn to use, with 
understanding, the names even of small 
numbers, and how they exult in this acqui- 
sition when they have attained it. Every 
number is conceived by the relation which 
it bears to unity, or to known combinations 
of units ; and upon that account, as well 
as on account of its abstract nature, all 
distinct notions of it require some degree 
of judgment- 

In its proper place, I shall have occasion 
to shew that judgment is an ingredient in 
all determinations of taste, in all moral 
determinations, and in many of our pas- 
sions and affections. So that this opera- 
tion, after we come to have any exercise of 
judgment, mixes with most of the operations 
of our minds, and, in analysing them, cannot 
be overlooked without confusion and error. 
[518-520] 



CHAPTER II. 



OF COMMON SENSE.* 



The word sense, in common language, 
seems to have a different meaning from that 
which it has in the writings of philosophers ; 
and those different meanings are apt to be 
confounded, and to occasion embarrassment 
| and error. 

Not to go back to ancient philosophy upon 
this point, modern philosophers consider 
sense as a power that has nothing to do with 
j udgment. Sense they consider as the power 
by which we receive certain ideas of im- 
pressions from objects ; and judgment as 
the power by which we eompare those 
ideas, and perceive their necessary agree- 
ments and disagreements. [ 520 ] 

The external senses give us the idea of 
colour, figure, sound, and other qualities of 
body, primary or secondary. Mr Locke 
gave the name of an internal sense to con- 
sciousness, because by it we have the ideas 
of thought, memory, reasoning, and other 
operations of our own minds. Dr Hutche- 
son of Glasgow, conceiving that we have 
simple and original ideas which cannot be 
imputed either to the external senses or to 
consciousness, introduced other internal 
senses ; such as the sense of harmony, the 
sense of beauty, and the moral sense. 
Ancient philosophers also spake of internal 
senses, of which memory was accounted one. 

But all these senses, whether external or 
internal, have been represented by philo- 
sophers as the means of furnishing our 
minds with ideas, without including any 
kind of judgment. Dr Hutcheson defines 
a sense to be a determination of the mind 
to receive any idea from the presence of an 
object independent on our will. 

" By this term (sense) philosophers, in 
general, have denominated those faculties 
in consequence of which we are liable to 
feelings relative to ourselves only, and from 
which they have not pretended to draw any 
conclusions concerning the nature of things ; 
whereas truth is not relative, but absolute 
and real — (Dr Priestlv's " Examination of 
Dr Reid,"&c, p. 123".) 

On the contrary, in common language, 
sense always implies judgment. A man of 
sense is a man of judgment. Good sense 
is good judgment. Nonsense is what is 
evidently contrary to right judgment. Com- 
mon sense is that degree of judgment which 
is common to men with whom we «an con- 
verse and transact business. 

Seeing and hearing, by philosophers, are 
called senses, because we have ideas by 



* On Common Sense, name and thine, see Note A. 
— H. 



422 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



them ; by the vulgar they are called senses, 
because we judge by them. We judge of 
colours by the eye ; of sounds by the ear ; 
of beauty and deformity by taste ; of right 
and wrong in conduct, by our moral sense 
or conscience. [521] 

Sometimes philosophers, who represent 
it as the sole province of sense to furnish 
us with ideas, fall unawares into the popu- 
lar opinion that they are judging faculties. 
Thus Locke, Book IV. chap. 2 :— " And of 
this, (that the quality or accident of colour 
doth really exist, and hath a being without 
me,) the greatest assurance I can possibly 
have, and to which my faculties can attain, 
is the testimony of my eyes, which are the 
proper and sole judges of this thing." 

This popular meaning of the word sense 
is not peculiar to the English language. 
The corresponding words in Greek, Latin, 
and, I believe, in all the European languages, 
have the same latitude. The Latin words 
sentire, sententia, sensa* sensus, from the 
last of which the English word sense is 
borrowed, express judgment or opinion, and 
are applied indifferently to objects of exter- 
nal sense, of taste, of morals, and of the 
understanding. 

I cannot pretend to assign the reason why 
a word, which is no term of art, which is 
familiar in common conversation, should 
have so different a meaning in philosophical 
writings. I shall only observe, that the 
philosophical meaning corresponds perfectly 
with the account which Mr Locke and other 
modern philosophers give of judgment. For, 
if the sole province of the senses, external 
and internal, be to furnish the mind with 
the ideas about which we judge and reason, 
it seems to be a natural consequence, that 
the sole province of judgment should be to 
compare those ideas, and to perceive their 
necessary relations. 

These two opinions seem to be so con- 
nected, that one may have been the cause 
of the other. I apprehend, however, that, 
if both be true, there is no room left for any 
knowledge or judgment, either of the real 
existence of contingent things, or of their 
contingent relations. 

To return to the popular meaning of the 
word sense. I believe it would be much 
more difficult to find good authors who never 
use it in that meaning, than to find such 
as do. [522] 

We may take Mr Pope as good authority 
for the meaning of an English word. He 
uses it often, and, in his " Epistle to the 
Earl of Burlington," has made a little de- 
scant upon it. 



* What does sensa mean ? Is it an erratum, or 
does he refer to sensa, once only, I believe, employed 
by Cicero, and interpreted by Nonius Marcellus, as 
'« quae sentiuntur ?"— H. 



,c Oft have you "hinted to your brother Peer, 
A certain truth, which many buy too dear: 
Something there is more needful than expense, 
And something previous ev'n to taste— 'tis sense. 
Good sense, w.uch only is the gift-of heaven, 
And, though no science, fairly worth the seven ; 
A light which in yourself you must perceive, 
Jones and Le Notre have it not to give." 

This inward light or sense is given by 
heaven to different persons in different de- 
grees. There is a certain degree of it which 
is necessary to our being subjects of law and 
government, capable of managing our own 
affairs, and answerable for our conduct 
towards others : this is called common 
sense, because it is common to all men with 
whom we can transact business, or call to 
account for their conduct. 

The laws of all civilised nations distin- 
guish those who have this gift of heaven, 
from those who have it not. The last may 
have rights which ought not to be violated, 
but, having no understanding in themselves 
to direct their actions, the laws appoint them 
to be guided by the understanding of others. 
It is easily discerned by its effects in men's 
actions, in their speeches, and even in their 
looks ; and when it is made a question 
whether a man has this natural gift or not, 
a judge or a jury, upon a short conversation 
with him, can, for the most part, determine 
the question with great assurance. 

The same degree of understanding which 
makes a man capable of acting with com- 
mon prudence in the conduct of life, makes 
him capable of discovering what is true and 
what is false in matters that are self-evident, 
and which he distinctly apprehends. [523] 

All knowledge, and all science, must be 
built upon principles that are self-evident ; 
and of such principles every man who has 
common sense is a competent judge, when 
he conceives them distinctly. Hence it is, 
that disputes very often terminate in an 
appeal to common sense. 

While the parties agree in the first prin- 
ciples on which their arguments are ground- 
ed, there is room for reasoning ; but when 
one denies what to the other appears too 
evident to need or to admit of proof, rea- 
soning seems to be at an end ; an appeal is 
made to common sense, and each party is 
left to enjoy his own opinion. 

There seems to be no remedy for this, 
nor any way left to discuss such appeals, 
unless the decisions of common sense can 
be brought into a code in which all reason- 
able men shall acquiesce. This, indeed, if 
it be possible, would be very desirable, and 
would supply a desideratum in logic ; and 
why should it be thought impossible that 
reasonable men should agree in things that 
are self-evident ? 

All that is intended in this chapter is to 

explain the meaning of common sense, that 

it may not be treated, as it has been by 

some, as a new principle, or as a word with- 

[521-523] 



CHAP. II. J 



OF COMMON SENSE. 



423 



out any meaning. I have endeavoured to 
shew that sense, in its most common, and 
therefore its most proper meaning, signifies 
judgment, though philosophers often use it 
in another meaning. From this it is natural 
to think that common sense should mean 
common judgment ; and so it really does. 

What the precise limits are which divide 
common judgment from what is beyond it 
on the one hand, and from what falls short 
of it on the other, may be difficult to de- 
termine ; and men may agree in the mean- 
ing of the word who have different opinions 
about those limits, or who even never 
thought of fixing them. This is as intel- 
ligible as, that all Englishmen should mean 
the same thing by the county of York, 
though perhaps not a hundredth part of 
them can point out its precise limits. [524] 

Indeed, it seems to me, that common 
sense is as unambiguous a word and as well 
understood as the county of York. We 
find it in innumerable places in good writers ; 
we hear it on innumerable occasions in con- 
versation ; and, as far as I am able to judge, 
always in the same meaning. And this is 
probably the reason why it is so seldom 
defined or explained. 

Dr Johnson, in the authorities he gives, 
to shew that the word sense signifies under- 
standing, soundness of faculties, strength of 
natural reason, quotes Dr Bentley for what 
may be called a definition of common sense, 
though probably not intended for that pur- 
pose, but mentioned accidentally : " God 
hath endowed mankind with power and 
abilities, which we call natural, light and 
reason, and common sense." 

It is true that common sense is a popular 
and not a scholastic word ; and by most of 
those who have treated systematically of 
the powers of the understanding, it is only 
occasionally mentioned, as it is by other 
writers. But I recollect two philosophical 
writers, who are exceptions to this remark. 
One is Buffier, who treated largely of com- 
mon sense, as a principle of knowledge, 
above fifty years ago. The other is Bishop 
Berkeley, who, I think, has laid as much 
stress upon common sense, in opposition to 
the doctrines of philosophers, as any philo- 
sopher that has come after him. If the 
reader chooses to look back to Essay II. 
chap. 10, he will be satisfied of this, from 
the quotations there made for another pur- 
pose, which it is unnecessary here to repeat. 

Men rarely ask what common sense is ; 
because every man believes himself pos- 
sessed of it, and would take it for an imput- 
ation upon his understanding to be thought 
unacquainted with it. Yet I remember 
two very eminent authors who have put 
this question ; and it is not improper to hear 
their sentiments upon a subject so frequently 
mentioned, and so rarely canvassed. [525] 
f524-526] 



It is well known that Lord Shaftesbury 
gave to one of his Treatises the title of 
" Sensus Communis; an Essay on the 
Freedom of Wit and Humour, in a Letter 
to a Friend ;" in which he puts his friend in 
mind of a free conversation with some of 
their friends on the subjects of morality 
and religion. Amidst the different opinions 
started and maintained with great life and 
ingenuity, one or other would, every now and 
then, take the liberty to appeal to common 
sense. Every one allowed the appeal ; no 
one would offer to call the authority of the 
court in question, till a gentleman whose 
good understanding was never yet brought 
in doubt, desired the company, very gravely, 
that they would tell him what common 
sense was. 

" If," said he, "■ by the word sense, we 
were to understand opinion and judgment, 
and by the word common, the generality or 
any considerable part of mankind, it would 
be hard to discover where the subject of 
common sense could lie ; for that which 
was according to the sense of one part of 
mankind, was against the sense of another. 
And if the majority were to determine com- 
mon sense, it would change as often as 
men changed. That in religion, common 
sense was as hard to determine as catholic 
or orthodox. What to one was absurdity^ 
to another was demonstration. 

" In policy, if plain British or Dutch 
sense were right, Turkish and French must 
certainly be wrong. And as mere non- 
sense as passive obedience seemed, we 
found it to be the common sense of a great 
party amongst ourselves, a greater party 
in Europe, and perhaps the greatest part 
of all the world besides. As for morals, 
the difference was still wider ; for even the 
philosophers could never agree in one and 
the same system. And some even of our 
most admired modern philosophers had 
fairly told us that virtue and vice had no 
other law or measure than mere fashion and 
vogue." [526] 

This is the substance of the gentleman's 
speech, which, I apprehend, explains the 
meaning of the word perfectly, and contains 
all that has been said or can be said against 
the authority of common sense, and the 
propriety of appeals to it. 

As there is no mention of any answer 
immediately made to this speech, we might 
be apt to conclude that the noble author 
adopted the sentiments of the intelligent 
gentleman whose speech he recites. But 
the contrary is manifest, from the title of 
Sensus Communis given to his Essay, from 
his frequent use of the word, and from the 
whole tenor of the Essay. 

The author appears to have a double in- 
tention in that Essay, corresponding to the 
double title prefixed to it. One intention 



424: 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



is, to justify the use of wit, humour, and 
ridicule, in discussing among friends the 
gravest subjects. " I can very well sup- 
pose," says he, " men may be frighted 
out of their wits ; but I have no apprehen- 
sion they should be laughed out of them. 
I can hardly imagine that, in a pleasant 
way, they should ever be talked out of their 
love for society, or reasoned out of humanity 
and common sense." 

The other intention, signified by the title 
Sensus Communis, is carried on hand in 
hand with the first, and is to shew that 
common sense is not so vague and uncertain 
a thing as it is represented to be in the 
sceptical speech before recited. " I will 
try," says he, " what certain knowledge or 
assurance of things may be recovered in 
that very way, (to wit, of humour,) by 
which all certainty, you thought, was lost, 
and an endless scepticism introduced." [527] 

He gives some criticisms upon the word 
sensus communis in Juvenal, Horace, and 
Seneca ; and, after shewing, in a facetious 
way throughout the treatise, that the fun- 
damental principles of morals, of politics, of 
criticism, and of every branch of knowledge, 
are the dictates of common sense, he sums 
up the whole in these words : — " That some 
moral and philosophical truths there are 
so evident in themselves that it would be 
easier to imagine half mankind run mad, 
and joined precisely in the same species of 
folly, than to admit anything as truth 
which should be advanced against such 
natural knowledge, fundamental reason, 
and common sense. " And, on taking leave, 
he adds : — " And now, my friend, should 
you find I had moralised in any tolerable 
manner, according to common sense, and 
without canting, I should be satisfied with 
my performance." 

Another eminent writer who has put the 
question what common sense is, is Fenelon, 
the famous Archbishop of Cambray. 

That ingenious and pious author, having 
had an early prepossession in favour of the 
Cartesian philosophy, made an attempt to 
establish, on a sure foundation, the meta- 
physical arguments which Des Cartes had 
invented to prove the being of the Deity. 
For this purpose, he begins with the Carte- 
sian doubt. He proceeds to find out the 
truth of his own existence, and then to ex- 
amine wherein the evidence and certainty 
of this and other such primary truths con- 
sisted. This, according to Cartesian prin- 
ciples, he places in the clearness and dis- 
tinctness of the ideas. On the contrary, 
he places the absurdity of the contrary pro- 
positions, in their being repugnant to his 
clear and distinct'ideas. 

To illustrate this, he gives various ex- 
amples of questions manifestly absurd and 
ridiculous, which every man of common 



understanding would, at first sight, perceive 
to be so ; and then goes on to this purpose. 

" What is it that makes these questions 
ridiculous ? Wherein does this ridicule 
precisely consist ? It will, perhaps, be 
replied, that it consists in this, that they 
shock common sense. But what is this 
same common sense ? It is not the first 
notions that all men have equally of the 
same things. [528] This common sense, 
which is always and in all places the same ; 
which prevents inquiry ; which makes in- 
quiry in some cases ridiculous ; which, in- 
stead of inquiring, makes a man laugh 
whether he will or not ; which puts it out 
of a man's power to doubt : this sense, 
which only waits to be consulted — which 
shews itself at the first glance, and imme- 
diately discovers the evidence or the absurd- 
ity of a question — is not this the same that 
I call my ideas ? 

" Behold, then, those ideas or general 
notions, which it is not in my power either 
to contradict or examine, and by which I 
examine and decide in every case, insomuch 
that I laugh instead of answering, as often 
as anything is proposed to me, which is evi- 
dently contrary to what these immutable 
ideas represent." 

I shall only observe upon this passage, 
that the interpretation it gives of Des 
Cartes' criterion of truth, whether just or 
not, is the most intelligible and the most 
favourable I have met with. 

I beg leave to mention one passage from 
Cicero, and to add two or three from late 
writers, which shew that this word is not 
become obsolete, nor has changed its 
meaning. 

"De Oratore," lib. 3 — "Omnes enim 
tacito quodam sensu, sine ulla arte aut 
ratione, in artibus ac rationibus, recta ac 
prava dijudicant. Idque cum faciant in 
picturis, et in signis, et in aliis operibus, ad 
quorum intelligentiam a natura minus hab- 
ent instrumenti, turn multo ostendunt magis 
in verborum, numerorum, vocumque judi- 
cio ; quod ea sint in communibus infixa 
sensibus ; neque earum rerum quemquam 
funditus natura voluit expert em." 

" Hume's " Essays and Treatises," vol. 

I. p. 5 "But a philosopher who proposes 

only to represent the common sense of 
mankind in more beautiful and more engag- 
ing colours, if by accident he commits a 
mistake, goes no farther, but, renewing his 
appeal to common sense, and the natural 
sentiments of the mind, returns into the 
right path, and secures himself from any 
dangerous illusion." [529] 

Hume's " Enquiry concerning the Prin- 
ciples of Morals," p. 2 " Those who have 

refused the reality of moral distinctions may 
be ranked among the disingenuous dis- 
putants. The only way of converting an 
[527-529] 



CHAP. JI.J 



OF COMMON SENSE. 



425 



antagonist of this kind is to leave him to 
himself : for, finding that nobody keeps up 
the controversy with him, it is probable he 
will at last, of himself, from mere weariness, 
come over to the side of common sense and 
reason." 

Priestley's " Institutes," Preliminary 
Essay, vol. i. p. 27 — " Because common 
sense is a sufficient guard against many 
errors in religion, it seems to have been 
taken for granted that that common sense 
is a sufficient instructor also, whereas in 
fact, without positive instruction, men would 
naturally have been mere savages with 
respect to religion ; as, without similar in- 
struction, they would be savages with re- 
spect to the arts of life and the sciences. 
Common sense can only be compared to a 
judge; but what can a judge do without 
evidence and proper materials from which 
to form a judgment ?" 

Priestley's '' Examination of Dr Reid," 
&c. page 127. — " But should we, out of 
complaisance, admit that what has hitherto 
been called judgment may be called sense, 
it is making too free with the established 
signification of words to call it common 
sense, which, in common acceptation, has 
long been appropriated to a very different 
thing — viz., to that capacity for judging of 
common things that persons of middling 
capacities are capable of." Page 129. — " I 
should, therefore, expect that, if a man was 
so totally deprived of common sense as not 
to be able to distinguish truth from false- 
hood in one case, he would be equally in- 
capable of distinguishing it in another." 
[530] 

From this cloud of testimonies, to which 
hundreds might be added, I apprehend, 
that whatever censure is thrown upon those 
who have spoke of common sense as a prin- 
ciple of knowledge, or who have appealed to 
it in matters that are self-evident, will fall 
light, when there are so many to share in 
it. Indeed, the authority of this tribunal 
is too sacred and venerable, and has pre- 
scription too long in its favour to be now 
tvi.-ely called in question. Those who are 
disposed to do so, may remember the shrewd 
saying of Mr Hobbes — " When reason is 
against a man, a man will be against rea- 
son." This is equally applicable to com- 
mon sense. 

From the account I nave given of the 
meaning of this term, it is easy to judge 
both of the proper use and of the abuse 
of it. 

It is absurd to conceive that there can be 
any opposition between reason and com- 
mon sense.* It is indeed the first-born of 
fc Reason ; and, as they are commonly joined 

* See above, p. loo, b, note t j and Mr Stewart's 
" Elements," II. p. 92.— H. 
[530, 531] 



together in speech and in writing, they are 
inseparable in their nature. 

We ascribe to reason two offices, or two 
degrees. The first is to judge of things 
self-evident ; the second to draw conclusions 
that are not self-evident from those that 
are. The first of these is the province, and 
the sole province, of common sense ; and, 
therefore, it coincides with reason in its 
whole extent, and is only another name for 
one branch or one degree of reason. Per- 
haps it may be said, Why then should you 
give it a particular name, since it is acknow- 
ledged to be only a degree of reason ? It 
would be a sufficient answer to this, Why 
do you abolish a name which is to be found 
in the language of all civilized nations, and 
has acquired a right by prescription ? Such 
an attempt is equally foolish and ineffectual. 
Every wise man will be apt to think that 
a name which is found in all languages as 
far back as we can trace them, is not with- 
out some use. [531] 

But there is an obvious reason why this 
degree of reason should have a name ap- 
propriated to it ; and that is, that, in the 
greatest part of mankind, no other degree of 
reason is to be found. It is this degree 
that entitles them to the denomination of 
reasonable creatures. It is this degree of 
reason, and this only, that makes a man 
capable of managing his own affairs, and 
answerable for his conduct towards others. 
There is therefore the best reason why it 
should have a name appropriated to it. 

These two degrees of reason differ in 
other respects, which would be sufficient to 
entitle them to distinct names. 

The first is purely the gift of Heaven. 
And where Heaven has not given it, no 
education can supply the want. The se- 
cond is learned by practice and rules, when 
the first is not wanting. A man who has 
common sense may be taught to reason. 
But, if he has not that gift, no teaching will 
make him able either to judge of first prin- 
ciples or to reason from them. 

I have only this farther to observe, that 
the province of common sense is more ex- 
tensive in refutation than in confirmation. 
A conclusion drawn by a train of just rea- 
soning from true principles cannot possibly 
contradict any decision of common sense, 
because truth will always be consistent 
with itself. Neither can such a conclu- 
sion receive any confirmation from com- 
mon sense, because it is not within its juris- 
diction. 

But it is possible that, by setting out 
from false principles, or by an error in 
reasoning, a man may be led to a conclu- 
sion that contradicts the decisions of com- 
mon sense. In this case, the conclusion 
is within the jurisdiction of common sense, 
though the reasoning on which it was 



426 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



grounded be not ; and a man of common 
sense may fairly reject the conclusion with- 
out being able to shew the error of the rea- 
soning that led to it- [532] 

Thus, if a mathematician, by a process 
of intricate demonstration, in which some 
false step was made, should be brought to 
this conclusion, that two quantities, which 
are both equal to a third, are not equal to 
each other, a man of common sense, with- 
out pretending to be a judge of the demon- 
stration, is well entitled to reject the con- 
clusion, and to pronounce it absurd. 



CHAPTER III. 

SENTIMENTS OF PHILOSOPHERS CONCERNING 
JUDGMENT. 

A difference about the meaning of a 
word ought not to occasion disputes among 
philosophers ; but it is often very proper to 
take notice of such differences, in order to 
prevent verbal disputes. There are, in- 
deed, no words in language more liable to 
ambiguity than those by which we express 
the operations of the mind ; and the most 
candid and judicious may sometimes be led 
into different opinions about their precise 
meaning. 

I hinted before what I take to be a pecu- 
liarity in Mr Locke with regard to the 
•meaning of the word judgment, and men- 
tioned what, I apprehend, may have led 
him into it. But let us hear himself, Essay, 
book iv. chap. 14 : — " The faculty which 
God has given to man to supply the want 
of clear and certain knowledge, where that 
cannot be had, is judgment ; whereby the 
mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree ; 
or, which is the same, any proposition to 
be true or false, without perceiving a de- 
monstrative evidence in the proofs. Thus 
the mind has two faculties conversant about 
truth and falsehood. First, Knowledge, 
whereby it certainly perceives, and is un- 
doubtedly satisfied of, the agreement or 
disagreement of any ideas. Secondly, 
Judgment, which is the putting ideas to- 
gether, or separating them from one an- 
other in the mind, when their certain agree- 
ment or disagreement is not perceived, but 
presumed to be so" [533] 

Knowledge, I think, sometimes signifies 
things known ; sometimes that act of the 
mind by which we know them. And in like 
manner opinion sometimes signifies things 
believed ; sometimes the act of the mind 
by which we believe them. But judgment 
is the faculty which is exercised in both 
these acts of the mind. In knowledge, we 
judge without doubting ; in opinion, with 
some mixture of doubt. But I know no 
authority, besides that of Mr Locke, for 



calling knowledge a faculty, any more than 
for calling opinion a faculty. 

Neither do I think that knowledge is 
confined within the narrow limits which 
Mr Locke assigns to it; because the far 
greatest part of what all men call human 
knowledge, is in things which neither ad- 
mit of intuitive nor of demonstrative proof. 

I have all along used the word judgment 
in a more extended sense than Mr Locke 
does in the passage above-mentioned. I 
understand by it that operation of mind by 
which we determine, concerning anything 
that may be expressed by a proposition, 
whether it be true or false. Every propo- 
sition is either true or false ; so is every 
judgment. A proposition may be simply 
conceived without judging of it. But when 
there is not only a conception of the pro- 
position, but a mental affirmation or nega- 
tion, an assent or dissent of the understand- 
ing, whether weak or strong, that is judg- 
ment. 

I think that, since the days of Aristotle, 
logicians have taken the word in that sense, 
and other writers, for the most part, 
though there are other meanings, which 
there is no danger of confounding with this. 
[534] 

We may take the authority of Dr Isaac 
Watts, as a logician, as a man who under- 
stood English, and who had a just esteem 
of Mr Locke's Essay. Logic. Introd. page 
5 — " Judgment is that operation of the 
mind, wherein we join two or more ideas 
together by one affirmation or negation; 
that is, we either affirm or deny this to be 
that. So: this tree is high ; that horse is not 
swift ; the mind of man is a thinking being; 
mere matter has no thought belonging to it; 
God is just; good men are of ten miserable in 
this world ; a righteous governor will make 
a difference betwixt the evil and the good; 
which sentences are the effect of judgment, 
and are called propositions." And, Part II. 
chap. ii. § 9 — " The evidence of sense is, 
when we frame a proposition according to 
the dictate of any of our senses. So we 
judge that grass is green ; that a trumpet 
gives a pleasant sound; that fire burns wood; 
water is soft ; and iron hard.'" 

In this meaning, judgment extends to 
every kind of evidence, probable or certain 
and to every degree of assent or dissent. 
It extends to all knowledge as well as to all 
opinion ; with this difference only, that in 
knowledge it is more firm and steady, like 
a house founded upon a rock. In opinion 
it stands upon a weaker foundation, and is 
more liable to be shaken and overturned. 

These differences about the meaning of 
words are not mentioned as if truth was on 
one side and error on the other, but as an 
apology for deviating, in this instance, from 
the phraseology of Mr Locke, which is, for 
[532-534] 



chap, in.] SENTIMENTS CONCERNING JUDGMENT. 



427 



the most part, accurate and distinct ; and 
because attention to the different meanings 
that are put upon words by different authors, 
is the best way to prevent our mistaking 
verbal differences for real differences of 
opinion. 

The common theory concerning ideas 
naturally leads to .a theory concerning 
judgment, which may be a proper test of its 
truth ; for, as they are necessarily con- 
nected, they must stand or fall together. 
Their connection is thus expressed by Mr 
Locke, Book IV. chap. 1 — " Since the 
mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, 
hath no other immediate object but its own 
ideas, which it alone does or can con- 
template, it is evident that our knowledge is 
only conversant about them. Knowledge 
then seems to me to be nothing but the 
perception of the connection and agreement, 
or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of 
our ideas. In this alone it consists." [535] 

There can only be one objection to the 
justice of this inference ; and that is, that 
the antecedent proposition from which it is 
inferred seems to have some ambiguity ; 
for, in the first clause of that proposition, 
the mind is said to have no other immediate 
object but its own ideas ; in the second, 
that it has no other object at all ; that it 
does or can contemplate ideas alone.* 

If the word immediate in the first clause 
be a mere expletive, and be not intended to 
limit the generality of the proposition, then 
the two clauses will be perfectly consistent, 
the second being only a repetition or expli- 
cation of the first ; and the inference that 
our knowledge is only conversant about 
ideas will be perfectly just and logical. 

But, if the word immediate in the first 
clause be intended to limit the general pro- 
position, and to imply that the mind has 
other objects besides its own ideas, though 
no other immediate objects, then it will not 
be true that it does or can contemplate ideas 
alone ; nor will the inference be justly 
drawn that our knowledge is only conversant 
about ideas. 

Mr Locke must either have meant his 
antecedent proposition, without any limita- 
tion by the word immediate, or he must 
have meant to limit it by that word, and to 
signify that there are objects of the mind 
which are not ideas. 

The first of these suppositions appears to 
me most probable, for several reasons. 
[536] 

First, Because, when he purposely de- 
fines the word idea, in the introduction to 
the Essay, he says it is whatsoever is the 

* In reference to the polemic that follows, see, for 
a solution, what has been said above in regard to the 
ambiguity of the term object, and Note B. In regard 
to the doctrine of Ideas, as held by the philosophers, 
see above, and Note C, &c— H. 
[535-537] 



object of the understanding when a man 
thinks, or whatever the mind can be em- 
ployed about in thinking. Here there is no 
room left for objects of the mind that are 
not ideas. The same definition is often 
repeated throughout the Essay. Some- 
times, indeed, the word immediate is added, 
as in the passage now under consideration ; 
but there is no intimation made that it ought 
to be understood when it is not expressed. 
Now, if it had really been his opinion that 
there are objects of thought which are not 
ideas, this definition, which is the ground- 
work of the whole Essay, would have been 
very improper, and apt to mislead his 
reader. 

Secondly, He has never attempted to 
shew how there can be objects of thought 
which are not immediate objects ; and, 
indeed, this seems impossible. For, what- 
ever the object be, the man either thinks of 
it, or he does not. There is no medium 
between these. If he thinks of it, it is an 
immediate object of thought while he thinks 
of it. If he does not think of it, it is no 
object of thought at all. Every object of 
thought, therefore, is an immediate object 
of thought, and the word immediate, joined 
to objects of thought, seems to be a mere 
expletive. 

Thirdly, Though Malebranche and Bishop 
Berkeley believed that we have no ideas of 
minds, or of the operations of minds, and 
that we may think and reason about them 
without ideas, this was not the opinion of 
Mr Locke. He thought that there are 
ideas of minds, and of their operations, as 
well as of the objects of sense ; that the 
mind perceives nothing but its own ideas, 
and that all words are the signs of ideas. 

A fourth reason is, That to suppose that 
he intended to limit the antecedent proposi- 
tion by the word immediate, is to impute to 
him a blunder in reasoning, which I do not 
think Mr Locke could have committed; 
for what can be a more glaring paralogism 
than to infer that, since ideas are partly, 
though not solely, the objects of thought, it 
is evident that all our knowledge is only 
conversant about them. If, on the con- 
trary, he meant that ideas are the only ob- 
jects of thought, then the conclusion drawn 
is perfectly just and obvious ; and he might 
very well say, that, since it is ideas only that 
the mind -does or can contemplate, it is evi- 
dent that our knowledge is only conversant 
about them. [537] 

As to the conclusion itself, I have only 
to observe, that, though he extends it only to 
what he calls knowledge, and not to what 
he calls judgment, there is the same reason 
for extending it to both. 

It is true of judgment, as well as of 
knowledge, that it can only be conversant 
about objects of the mind, or about things 



428 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



ESSAY VI. 



which the mind can contemplate. Judg- 
ment, as well as knowledge, supposes the 
conception of the object about which we 
judge ; and to judge of objects that never 
were nor can be objects of the mind, is evi- 
dently impossible. 

This, therefore, we may take for granted, 
that, if knowledge be conversant about ideas 
only, because there is no other object of the 
mind, it must be no less certain that judg- 
ment is conversant about ideas only, for 
the same reason. 

Mr Locke adds, as the result of his rea- 
soning, " Knowledge, then, seems to me to 
be nothing but the perception of the con- 
nection and agreement, or disagreement 
and repugnancy, of any of our ideas. In 
this alone it consists." 

This is a very important point, not only 
on its own account, but on account of its 
necessary connection with his system con- 
cerning ideas, which is such as that both 
must stand or fall together ; for, if there is 
any part of human knowledge which does 
not consist in the perception of the agree- 
ment or disagreement of ideas, it must fol- 
low that there are objects of thought and 
of contemplation which are not ideas. 
[538] 

This point, therefore, deserves to be care- 
fully examined. With this view, let us 
first attend to its meaning, which, I think, 
can hardly be mistaken, though it may 
need some explication. 

Every point of knowledge, and every 
judgment, is expressed by a proposition, 
wherein something is affirmed or denied of 
the subject of the proposition. 

By perceiving the connection or agree- 
ment of two ideas, I conceive, is meant per- 
ceiving the truth of an affirmative proposi- 
tion, of which the subject and predicate are 
ideas. In like manner, by perceiving the 
disagreement and repugnancy of any two 
ideas, I conceive is meant perceiving the 
truth of a negative proposition, of which 
both subject and predicate are ideas. This 
I take to be the only meaning the words 
can bear, and it is confirmed by what Mr 
Locke says in a passage already quoted in 
this chapter, that " the mind, taking its 
ideas to agree or disagree, is the same as 
taking any proposition to be true or false." 
Therefore, if the definition of knowledge 
given by Mr Locke be a just one, the sub- 
ject, as well as the predicate of every pro- 
position, by which any point of knowledge 
is expressed, must be an idea, and can be 
nothing else ; and the same must hold of 
every proposition by which judgment is 
expressed, as has been shewn above. 

Having ascertained the meaning of this 
definition of human knowledge, we are 
next to consider how far it is just. 

First, I would observe that, if the word 



idea be taken in the meaning which it had 
at first among the Pythagoreans and Pla- 
tonists, and if by knowledge be meant only 
abstract and general knowledge, (which I 
believe Mr Locke had chiefly in his view,) 
I think the proposition is true, that such 
knowledge consists solely in perceiving the 
truth of propositions whose subject and 
predicate are ideas. [539] 

By ideas here I mean things conceived 
abstractly, without regard to their existence. 
We commonly call them abstract notions, 
abstract conceptions, abstract ideas — the 
Feripatetics called them universals ; and 
the Platonists, who knew no other ideas, 
called them ideas without addition. 

Such ideas are both subject and predicate 
in every proposition which expresses ab- 
stract knowledge. 

The whole body of pure mathematics is 
an abstract science ; and in every mathe- 
matical proposition, both subject and pre- 
dicate are ideas, in the sense above explained. 
Thus, when I say the side of a square is not 
commensurable to its diagonal — in this 
proposition the side and the diagonal of a 
square are the subjects, (for, being a rela- 
tive proposition, it must have two subjects.) 
A square, its side, and its diagonal, are 
ideas, or universals ; they are not indivi- 
duals, but things predicable of many indi- 
viduals. Existence is not included in their 
definition, nor in the conception we form of 
them. The predicate of the proposition is 
commensurable, which must be an univer- 
sal, as the predicate of every proposition is 
so. In other branches of knowledge, many 
abstract truths may be found, but, for the 
most part, mixed with others that are not 
abstract. 

I add, that I apprehend that what is strictly 
called demonstrative evidence, is to be found 
in abstract knowledge only. This was the 
opinion of Aristotle, of Plato, and, I think, 
of all the ancient philosophers ; and I be- 
lieve in this they judged right. It is true, 
we often meet with demonstration in astro- 
mony, in mechanics, and in other branches 
of natural philosophy ; but, I believe, we 
shall always find that such demonstrations 
are grounded upon principles of supposi- 
tions, which have neither intuitive nor 
demonstrative evidence. [540] 

Thus, when we demonstrate that the 
path of a projectile in vacuo is a parabola, 
we suppose that it is acted upon with the 
same force and in the same direction 
through its whole path by gravity. This is 
not intuitively known, nor is it demon- 
strable ; and, in the demonstration, we rea- 
son from the laws of motion, which are 
principles not capable of demonstration, 
but grounded on a different kind of evidence. 

Ideas, in the sense above explained, are 

creatures of the mind ; they are fabricated 

[538-540] 



HI.] 



SENTIMENTS CONCERNING JUDGMENT. 



429 



by its rational powers ; we know their 
nature and their essence — for they are 
nothing more than they are conceived to 
be ; — and, because they are perfectly known, 
we can reason about them with the highest 
degree of evidence. 

And, as they are not things that exist, 
but things conceived, they neither have 
place nor time, nor are they liable to 
change. 

When we say that they are in the mind, 
this can mean no more but that they are 
conceived by the mind, or that they are 
objects of thought. The act of conceiving 
them is, no doubt, in the mind ; the things 
conceived have no place, because they have 
not existence. Thus, a circle, considered 
abstractly, is said figuratively to be in the 
mind of him that conceives it ; but in no 
other sense than the city of London or the 
kingdom of France is said to be in his 
mind when he thinks of those objects. 

Place and time belong to finite things that 
exist, but not to things that are barely con- 
ceived. They may be objects of concep- 
tion to intelligent beings in every place and 
at all times. Hence the Pythagoreans and 
Platonists were led to think that they are 
eternal and omnipresent. If they had ex- 
istence, they must be so ; for they have no 
relation to any one place or time, which 
they have not to every place and to every 
time. 

The natural prejudice of mankind, that 
what we conceive must have existence, led 
those ancient philosophers to attribute ex- 
istence to ideas ; and by this they were led 
into all the extravagant and mysterious 
parts of their system. When it is purged 
of these, I apprehend it to be the only in- 
telligible and rational system concerning 
ideas. [541] 

I agree with them, therefore, that ideas 
are immutably the same in all times and 
places ; for this means no more but that a 
circle is always a circle, and a square always 
a square. 

I agree with them that ideas are the pat- 
terns or exemplars by which everything 
was made that had a beginning : for an 
intelligent artificer must conceive his work 
before it is made ; he makes it according to 
that conception ; and the thing conceived, 
before it exists, can only be an idea. 

I agree with them that every species of 
things, considered abstractly, is an idea; 
and that the idea of the species is in every 
individual of the species, without division 
or multiplication. This, indeed, is expressed 
somewhat mysteriously, according to the 
manner of the sect ; but it may easily be 
explained. 

Every idea is an attribute ; and it is a 
common way of speaking to say, that the 
attribute is in every subject of which it may 
[541-54.3] 



truly be affirmed. Thus, to he above fifty 
years of age is an attribute or idea. This 
attribute may be in, or affirmed of, fifty 
different individuals, and be the same in 
all, without division or multiplication. 

I think that not only every species, but 
every genus, higher or lower, and every 
attribute considered abstractly, is an idea. 
These are things conceived without regard to 
existence ; they are universals, and, there- 
fore, ideas, according to the ancient mean- 
ing of that word. [542] 

It is true that, after the Platonists en- 
tered into disputes with the Peripatetics, in 
order to defend the existence of eternal 
ideas, they found it prudent to contract the 
line of defence, and maintained only that 
there is an idea of every species of natural 
things, but not of the genera, nor of things 
artificial. They were unwilling to multiply 
beings beyond what was necessary ; but 
in this, I think, they departed from the 
genuine principles of their system. 

The definition of a species is nothing 
but the definition of the genus, with the 
addition of a specific difference ; and the 
division of things into species is the work 
of the mind, as well as their division into 
genera and classes. A species, a genus, an 
order, a class, is only a combination of at- 
tributes made by the mind, and called by 
one name. There is, therefore, the same 
reason for giving the name of idea to every 
attribute, and to every species and genus, 
whether higher or lower : these are only 
more complex attributes, or combinations 
of the more simple. And, though it might 
be improper, without necessity, to multiply 
beings which they believed to have a real 
existence, yet, had they seen that ideas 
are not things that exist, but things that 
are conceived, they would have appre- 
hended no danger nor expense from thei* 
number. 

Simple attributes, species and genera, 
lower or higher, are all things conceived 
without regard to existence ; they are uni- 
versals ; they are expressed by general 
words ; and have an equal title to be called 
by the name of ideas. 

I likewise agree with those ancient phi- 
losophers that ideas are the object, and the 
sole object, of science, strictly so called— 
that is, of demonstrative reasoning. 

And, as ideas are immutable, so their 
agreements and disagreements, and all their 
relations and attributes, are immutable. 
All mathematical truths are immutably 
true. Like the ideas about which they are 
conversant, they have no relation to time 
or place, no dependence upon existence or 
change. That the angles of a plane tri- 
angle are equal to two right angles always 
was, and always will be, true, though no 
triangle had ever existed. [543] 



430 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS 



[essay VI. 



The same may be said of all abstract 
truths : on that account they have often 
been called eternal truths ; and, for the 
same reason, the Pythagoreans ascribed 
eternity to the ideas about which they are 
conversant. They may very properly be 
called necessary truths ; because it is im- 
possible they should not be true at all times 
and in all places. 

Such is the nature of all truth that can 
be discovered, by perceiving the agreements 
and disagreements of ideas, when we take 
that word in its primitive sense. And that 
Mr Locke, in his definition of knowledge, 
had chiefly in his view abstract truths, we 
may be led to think from the examples he 
gives to illustrate it. 

But there is another great class of truths, 
which are not abstract and necessary, and, 
therefore, cannot be perceived in the agree- 
ments and disagreements of ideas. These 
are all the truths we know concerning the 
real existence of things — the truth of our 
own existence— of the existence of other 
things, inanimate, animal, and rational, and 
of their various attributes and relations. 

These truths may be called contingent 
truths. I except only the existence and 
attributes of the Supreme Being, which is 
the only necessary truth I know regarding 
existence. 

All other beings that exist depend for 
their existence, and all that belongs to it, 
upon the will and power of the first cause ; 
therefore, neither their existence, nor their 
nature, nor anything that befalls them, is 
necessary, but contingent. 

But, although the existence of the Deity 
be necessary, I apprehend we can only de- 
duce it from contingent truths. The only 
arguments for the existence of a Deity 
which I am able to comprehend, are ground- 
ed upon the knowledge of my own existence, 
and the existence of other finite beings. 
But these are contingent truths. [544] 

I believe, therefore, that by perceiving 
agreements and disagreements of ideas, no 
contingent truth whatsoever can be known, 
nor the real existence of anything, not even 
our own existence, nor the existence of a 
Deity, which is a necessary truth. Thus I 
have endeavoured to shew what knowledge 
may, and what cannot be attained, by per- 
ceiving the agreements and disagreements 
of ideas, when we take that word in its 
primitive sense. 

We are, in the next place, to consider, 
whether knowledge consists in perceiving the 
agreement or disagreement of ideas, taking 
ideas in any of the senses in which the word 
is used by Mr Locke and other modern 
philosophers. 

1. Very often the word idea is used so, 
that to have the idea of anything is a peri- 
phrasis for conceiving it. In this sense, an 



idea is not an object of thought, it is thought 
itself. It is the act of the mind by which 
we conceive any object. And it is evident 
that this could not be the meaning which 
Mr Locke had in view in his definition of 
knowledge. 

2. A second meaning of the word idea is 
that which Mr Locke gives in the intro- 
duction to his Essay, when he is making an 
apology for the frequent use of it : — " It be- 
ing that term, I think, which serves best to 
stand for whatsoever is the object of the 
understanding when a man thinks, or what- 
ever it is which a man can be employed 
about in thinking." 

By this definition, indeed, everything that 
can be the object of thought is an idea. 
The objects of our thoughts may, I think, 
be reduced to two classes. 

The first class comprehends all those 
objects which we not only can think of, but 
which we believe to have a real existence : 
such as the Creator of all things, and all 
his creatures that fall within our notice. 
[545] I oan think of the sun and moon, 
the earth and sea, and of the various animal, 
vegetable, and inanimate productions with 
which it hath pleased the bountiful Creator 
to enrich our globe. I can think of myself, 
of my friends and acquaintance. I think 
of the author of the Essay with high esteem. 
These, and such as these, are objects of the 
understanding which we believe to have real 
existence. 

A second class of objects of the under- 
standing which a man may be employed 
about in thinking, are things which we either 
believe never to have existed, or which we 
think of without regard to their existence. 

Thus, I can think of Don Quixote, of 
the Island of Laputa, of Oceana, and of 
Utopia, which I believe never to have ex- 
isted. Every attribute, every species, and 
every genus of things, considered abstractly, 
without any regard to their existence or 
non-existence, may be an object of the 
understanding. 

To this second class of objects of the 
understanding, the name of idea does very 
properly belong, according to the primitive 
sense of the word, and I have already con- 
sidered what knowledge does and what 
does not consist in perceiving the agree- 
ments and disagreements of such ideas. 

But, if we take the word idea in so ex- 
tensive a sense as to comprehend, not only 
the second, but also the first class of objects 
of the understanding, it will undoubtedly 
be true that all knowledge consists in per- 
ceiving the agreements and disagreement 
of ideas : for it is impossible that there can 
be any knowledge, any judgment, any 
opinion, true or false, which is not employed 
about the objects of the understanding. 
But whatsoever is an object of the under- 
f544, 545] 



chap, in.] SENTIMENTS CONCERNING JUDGMENT. 



431 



standing is an idea, according to this second 
meaning of the word. 

Yet I am persuaded that Mr Locke, in 
his definition of knowledge, did not mean 
that the word idea should extend to all those 
things which we commonly consider as ob- 
jects of the understanding. [546] 

Though Bishop Berkeley believed that 
eun, moon, and stars, and all material things, 
are ideas, and nothing but ideas, Mr Locke 
nowhere professes this opinion. He be- 
lieved that we have ideas of bodies, but not 
that bodies are ideas. In like manner, he 
believed that we have ideas of minds, but 
not that minds are ideas. When he in- 
quired so carefully into the origin of all our 
ideas, he did not surely mean to find the 
origin of whatsoever may be the object of 
the understanding, nor to resolve the origin 
of everything that may be an object of 
understanding into sensation and reflec- 
tion. 

3. Setting aside, therefore, the two mean- 
ings of the word idea, before mentioned, as 
meanings which Mr Locke could not have 
in his view in the definition he gives of 
knowledge, the only meaning that could be 
intended in this place is that which I before 
called the philosophical meaning of the 
word idea, which hath a reference to the 
theory commonly received about the manner 
in which the mind perceives external objects, 
and in which it remembers and conceives 
objects that are not present to it. It is a very 
ancient opinion, and has been very generally 
received among philosophers, that we can- 
not perceive or think of such objects im- 
mediately, but by the medium of certain 
images or representatives of them really 
existing in the mind at the time. 

To those images the ancients gave the 
name of species and phantasms. Modern 
philosophers have given them the name of 
ideas. " 'Tis evident," says Mr Locke, 
book iv., chap. 4, "themindknows not things 
immediately, but only by the intervention 
of the ideas it has of them." And in the 
same paragraph he puts this question : 
" How shall the mind, when it perceives 
nothing but its own ideas, know that they 
agree with things themselves ?" [547] 

This theory I have already considered, 
in treating of perception, of memory, and 
of conception. The reader will there find 
the reasons that lead me to think that it 
has no solid foundation in reason, or in 
attentive reflection upon those operations 
of our minds ; that it contradicts the im- 
mediate dictates of our natural faculties, 
which are of higher authority than any 
theory ; that it has taken its rise from the 
same prejudices which led all the ancient 
philosophers to think that the Deity could 
not make this world without some eternal 
matter to work upon, and which led the 
[546-548] 



Pythagoreans and Platonists to think that 
he could not conceive the plan of the world 
he was to make without eternal ideas really 
existing as patterns to work by ; and that 
this theory, when its necessary consequences 
are fairly pursued, leads to absolute scep- 
ticism, though those consequences were not 
seen by most of the philosophers who have 
adopted it. 

I have no intention to repeat what nas 
before been said upon those points ; but 
only, taking ideas in this sense, to make 
some observations upon the definition which 
Mr Locke gives of knowledge. 

First, If all knowledge consists in per- 
ceiving the agreements and disagreements 
of ideas — that is, of representative images of 
things existing in the mind — it obviously 
follows that, if there be no such ideas, there 
can be no knowledge. So that, if there 
should be found good reason for giving up 
this philosophical hypothesis, all knowledge 
must go along with it. 

I hope, however, it is not so : and that, 
though this hypothesis, like many others, 
should totter and fall to the ground, know- 
ledge will continue to stand firm upon a 
more permanent basis. [548] 

The cycles and epicycles of the ancient 
astronomers were for a thousand years 
thought absolutely necessary to explain 
the motions of the heavenly bodies. Yet 
now, when all men believe them to have 
been mere fictions, astronomy has not fallen 
with them, but stands upon a more rational 
foundation than before. Ideas, or images 
of things existing in the mind, have, for a 
longer time, been thought necessary for 
explaining the operations of the understand- 
ing. If they should likewise at last be 
found to be fictions, human knowledge and 
judgment would suffer nothing by being 
disengaged from an unwieldy hypothesis. 
Mr Locke surely did not look upon the ex- 
istence of ideas as a philosophical hypo- 
thesis. He thought that we are conscious 
of their existence, otherwise he would not 
have made the existence of all our know- 
ledge to depend upon the existence of ideas. 

Secondly, Supposing this hypothesis to 
be true, I agree with Mr Locke that it is 
an evident and necessary consequence that 
our knowledge can be conversant about 
ideas only, and must consist in perceiving 
their attributes and relations. For nothing 
can be more evident than this, that all 
knowledge, and all judgment and opinion, 
must be about things which are or may be 
immediate objects of our thought. What 
cannot be the object of thought, or the 
object of the mind in thinking, cannot be 
the object of knowledge or of opinion. 

Everything we can know of any object, 
must be either some attribute of the object, 
or some relation it bears to some other 



432 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



object or objects. By the agreements and 
disagreements of objects, I apprehend Mr 
Locke intended to express both their attri- 
butes and their relations. If ideas then be 
the only objects of thought, the consequence 
is necessary, that they must be the only 
objects of knowledge, and all knowledge 
must consist in perceiving their agreements 
and disagreements — that is, their attributes 
and relations. 

The use I would make of this conse- 
quence, is to shew that the hypothesis must 
be false, from which it necessarily follows. 
For if we have any knowledge of things 
that are not ideas, it will follow no less 
evidently, that ideas are not the only objects 
of our thoughts. [549] 

Mr Locke has pointed out the extent and 
limits of human knowledge, in his fourth 
book, with more accuracy and judgment 
than any philosopher had done before ; but 
he has not confined it to the agreements 
and disagreements of ideas. And I cannot 
help thinking that a great part of that book 
is an evident refutation of the principles 
laid down in the beginning of it. 

Mr Locke did not believe that he himself 
was an idea ; that his friends and acquaint- 
ance were ideas ; that the Supreme Being, 
to speak with reverence, is an idea ; or 
that the sun and moon, the earth and the 
sea, and other external objects of sense, are 
ideas. He believed that he had some cer- 
tain knowledge of all those objects. His 
knowledge, therefore, did not consist solely 
in perceiving the agreements and disagree- 
ments of his ideas ; for, surely, to perceive 
the existence, the attributes, and relations 
of things, which are not ideas, is not to per- 
ceive the agreements and disagreements of 
ideas. And, if things which are not ideas be 
objects of knowledge, they must be objects of 
thought. On the contrary, if ideas be the 
only objects of thought, there can be no 
knowledge, either of our own existence, or 
of the existence of external objects, or of 
the existence of a Deity. 

This consequence, as far as concerns the 
existence of external objects of sense, was 
afterwards deduced from the theory of ideas 
by Bishop Berkeley with the clearest evi- 
dence ; and that author chose rather to 
adopt the consequence than to reject the 
theory on which it was grounded. But, 
with regard to the existence of our own 
minds, of other minds, and of a Supreme 
Mind, the Bishop, that he might avoid the 
consequence, rejected a part of the theory, 
and maintained that we can think of minds, 
of their attributes and relations, without 
ideas. [550 J 

Mr Hume saw very clearly the conse- 
quences of this theory, and adopted them 
in his speculative moments ; but candidly 
acknowledges that, in the common busi- 



ness of life, he found himself under a neces- 
sity of believing with the vulgar. His 
" Treatise of Human Nature" is the only 
system to which the theory of ideas leads ; 
and, in my apprehension, is, in all its parts, 
the necessary consequence of that theory. 

Mr Locke, however, did not see all the 
consequences of that theory ; he adopted it 
without doubt or examination, carried along 
by the stream of philosophers that w r ent 
before him ; and his judgment and good 
sense have led him to say many things, and 
to believe many things, that cannot be re- 
conciled to it. 

He not only believed his own existence, 
the existence of external things, and the 
existence of a Deity ; but he has shewn 
very justly how we come by the knowledge 
of these existences. 

It might here be expected that he should 
have pointed out the agreements and dis- 
agreements of ideas from which these exist- 
ences are deduced ; but this is impossible, 
and he has not even attempted it. 

Our own existence, he observes, we know 
intuitively; but this intuition is not a percep- 
tion of the agreement or disagreement of 
ideas ; for the subject of the proposition, / 
exist, is not an idea, but a person. 

The knowledge of external objects of 
sense, he observes, we can have only by sensa- 
tion. This sensation he afterwards expresses 
more clearly by the testimony of our senses, 
which are the proper and sole judges of this 
thing; whose testimony is the greatest assur- 
ance we can possibly have, and to which 
our faculties can attain. This is perfectly 
agreeable to the common sense of mankind, 
and is perfectly understood by those who 
never heard of the theory of ideas. Our 
senses testify immediately the existence, 
and many of the attributes and relations of 
external material beings ; and, by our con- 
stitution, we rely with assurance upon their 
testimony, without seeking a reason for 
doing so. This assurance, Mr Locke ac- 
knowledges, deserves the name of know- 
ledge. But those external things are not 
ideas, nor are their attributes and relations 
the agreements and disagreements of ideas, 
but the agreements and disagreements of 
things which are not ideas. [551] 

To reconcile this to the theory of ideas, 
Mr Locke says, That it is the actual receiv- 
ing of ideas from without that gives us notice 
of the existence of those external things. 

This, if understood literally, would lead 
us back to the doctrine of Aristotle, that 
our ideas or species come from without 
from the external objects, and are the image 
or form of those objects. But Mr Locke, 
I believe, meant no more by it, but that 
our ideas of sense must have a cause, and 
that we are not the cause of them our- 



[549-551] 



chap, in.] SENTIMENTS CONCERNING JUDGMENT. 



433 



Bishop Berkeley acknowledges all this, 
and shews very clearly that it does not 
afford the least shadow of reason for the 
belief of any material object — nay, that 
there can be nothing external that has any 
resemblance to our ideas but the ideas of 
other minds. 

It is evident, therefore, that the agree- 
ments and disagreements of ideas can give 
us no knowledge of the existence of any 
material thing. If any knowledge can be 
attained of things which are not ideas, that 
knowledge is a perception of agreements 
and: disagreements ; not of ideas, but of 
things that are not ideas. 

As to the existence of a deity, though 
Mr Locke was aware that Des Cartes, and 
many after him, had attempted to prove it 
merely from the agreements and disagree- 
ments of ideas ; yet " he thought it an 
ill way of establishing that truth, and si- 
lencing Atheists, to lay the whole stress of so 
important a point upon that sole founda- 
tion." And, therefore, he proves this 
point, with great sti-ength and solidity, from 
our own existence, and the existence of the 
sensible parts of the universe. [552] By 
memory, Mr Locke says, we have the 
knowledge of the past existence of several 
things. But all conception of past exist- 
ence, as well as of external existence, is 
irreconcileable to the theory of ideas ; be- 
cause it supposes that there may be imme- 
diate objects of thought, which are not ideas 
presently existing in the mind. 

I conclude, therefore, that, if we have 
any knowledge of our own existence, or of 
the existence of what we see about us, or of 
the existence of a Supreme Being, or if 
we have any knowledge of things past by 
memory, that knowledge cannot consist in 
perceiving the agreements and disagree- 
ments of ideas. 

This conclusion, indeed, is evident of 
itself. For, if knowledge consists solely in 
the perception of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of ideas, there can be no knowledge of 
any proposition, which does not express 
some agreement or disagreement of ideas ; 
consequently, there can be no knowledge of 
any proposition, which expresses either the 
existence, or the attributes or relations of 
things, which are not ideas. If, therefore, 
the theory of ideas be true, there can be no 
knowledge of anything but of ideas. And, 
on the other hand, if we have any know- 
ledge of anything besides ideas, that theory 
must be false. 

There can be no knowledge, no judgment 
or opinion about things which are not im- 
mediate objects of thought. This I take to 
be self-evident. If, therefore, ideas be the 
only immediate objects of thought, they 
must be the only things in nature of which 
we can have any knowledge, and about 
[552-55i~] 



which we can have any judgment or 
opinion. 

This necessary consequence of the com- 
mon doctrine of ideas Mr Hume saw, and 
has made evident in his " Treatise of 
Human Nature ;" but the use he made of 
it was not to overturn the theory with which 
it is necessarily connected, but to overturn 
all knowledge, and to leave no ground to 
believe anything whatsoever. If Mr Locke 
had seen this consequence, there is reason 
to think that he would have made another 
use of it. [553] 

That a man of Mr Locke's judgment and 
penetration did not perceive a consequence 
so evident, seems indeed very strange ; and 
I know no other account that can be given of 
it but this — that the ambiguity of the word 
idea has misled him in this, as in several 
other instances. Having at first defined 
ideas to be whatsoever is the object of the 
understanding when we think, he takes it 
very often in that unlimited sense ; and so 
everything that can be an object of thought 
is an idea. At other times, he uses the 
word to signify certain representative images 
of things in the mind, which philosophers 
have supposed to be immediate objects of 
thought. At other times, things conceived 
abstractly, without regard to their exist- 
ence, are called ideas. Philosophy is much 
indebted to Mr Locke for his observations 
on the abuse of words. It is pity he did 
not apply these observations to the word 
idea, the ambiguity and abuse of which has 
very much hurt his excellent Essay. 

There are some other opinions of philo- 
sophers concerning judgment, of which I 
think it unnecessary to say much. 

Mr Hume sometimes adopts Mr Locke's 
opinion, that it is the perception of the 
agreement or disagreement of our ideas ; 
sometimes he maintains that judgment and 
reasoning resolve themselves into concep- 
tion, and are nothing but particular ways 
of conceiving objects ; and he says, that an 
opinion or belief may most accurately be 
defined, a lively idea related to or associated 
wish a present impression. — Treatise of Hu-- 
man Nature, vol. I. page 172. 

I have endeavoured before, in the first 
chapter of this Essay, to shew that judgment 
is an operation of mind specifically distinct 
from the bare conception of an obj ect. I have 
also considered his notion of belief, in treating 
of the theories concerning memory. [554] 

Dr Hartley says — " That assent and dis- 
sent must come under the notion of ideas, 
being only those very complex internal 
feelings which adhere by association to such 
clusters of words as are called propositions 
in general, or affirmations and negations in 
particular." 

This, if 1 understand its meaning, agrees 
with the opinion of Mr Hume, above meu- 
2f 



434 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



tioned, and has therefore been before con- 
sidered. 

Dr Priestly has given another definition 
of judgment: — "It is nothing more than 
the perception of the universal concurrence, 
or the perfect coincidence of two ideas ; or 
the want of that concurrence or coinci- 
dence." This, I think, coincides with Mr 
Locke's definition, and therefore has been 
already considered. 

There are many particulars which deserve 
to be known, and which might very properly 
be considered in this Essay on judgment ; 
concerning the various kinds of propositions 
by which our judgments are expressed ; 
their subjects and predicates ; their con- 
versions and oppositions : but as these are 
to be found in every system of logic, from 
Aristotle down to the present age, I think 
it unnecessary to swell this Essay with the 
repetition of what has been said so often. 
The remarks which have occurred to me 
upon what is commonly said on these points, 
as well as upon the art of syllogism ; the 
utility of the school logic, and the improve- 
ments that may be made in it, may be found 
in a " Short Account of Aristotle's Logic, 
with Remarks," which Lord Kames has 
honoured with a place in his " Sketches of 
the History of Man." [555] 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF FIRST PRINCIPLES IN GENERAL. 

One of the most important distinctions of 
our judgments is, that some of them are 
intuitive, others grounded on argument. 

It is not in our power to judge as we 
will. The judgment is carried along neces- 
sarily by the evidence, real or seeming, 
which appears to us at the time. But, in 
propositions that are submitted to our 
judgment, there is this great difference — 
some are of such a nature that a man of 
ripe understanding may apprehend them 
distinctly, and perfectly understand their 
meaning, without finding himself under any 
necessity of believing them to be true or 
false, probable or improbable. The judg- 
ment remains in suspense, until it is in- 
clined to one side or another by reasons or 
arguments. 

But there are other propositions which 
are no sooner understood than they are be- 
lieved. The judgment follows the appre- 
hension of them necessarily, and both are 
equally the work of nature, and the result 
of our original powers. There is no search- 
ing for evidence, no weighing of arguments ; 
the proposition is not deduced or inferred 
from another ; it has the light of truth in 
itself, and has no occasion to borrow it 
from another. 



Propositions of the last kind, when they 
are used in matters of science, have com- 
monly been called axioms ; and on what- 
ever occasion they are used, are called first 
principles, principles of common sense, com- 
mon notions, self-evident truths. Cicero 
calls them natures judicia, judicia communi- 
bus hominum sensibus xnfixa. Lord Shaftes- 
bury expresses them by the words, natural 
knowledge, fundamental reason, and common 
sense. [556] 

What has been said, I think, is Sufficient 
to distinguish first principles, or intuitive 
judgments, from those which may be as- 
cribed to the power of reasoning ; nor is it 
a just objection against this distinction, that 
there may be some judgments concerning 
which we may be dubious to which class 
they ought to be referred. There is a real 
distinction between persons within the 
house, and those that are without ; yet it 
may be dubious to which the man belongs 
that stands upon the threshold. 

The power of reasoning — that is, of draw- 
ing a conclusion from a chain of premises — 
may with some propriety be called an art. 
" All reasoning," says Mr Locke, " is 
search and casting about, and requires 
pains and application." It resembles the 
power of walking, which is acquired by use 
and exercise. Nature prompts to it, and 
has given the power of acquiring it ; but 
must be aided by frequent exercise before 
we are able to walk. After repeated efforts, 
much stumbling, and many falls, we learn 
to walk ; and it is in a similar manner that 
we learn to reason. 

But the power of judging in self-evident 
propositions, which are clearly understood, 
may be compared to the power of swallow- 
ing our food. It is purely natural, and there- 
fore common to the learned and the un- 
learned, to the trained and the untrained. 
It requires ripeness of understanding, and 
freedom from prejudice, but nothing else. 

I take it for granted that there are self- 
evident principles. Nobody, I think, de- 
nies it. And if any man were so sceptical 
as to deny that there is any proposition 
that is self-evident, I see not how it would 
be possible to convince him by reasoning. 

But yet there seems to be great difference 
of opinions among philosophers about first 
principles. What one takes to be self-evi- 
dent, another labours to prove by argu- 
ments, and a third denies altogether. [557] 

Thus, before the time of Des Cartes, it 
was taken for a first principle, that there is 
a sun and a moon, an earth and sea, which 
really exist, whether we think of them or 
not. Des Cartes thought that the exist- 
ence of those, things ought to be proved by 
argument ; and in this he has been follow- 
ed by Malebranche, Arnauld, and Locke. 
They have all laboured to prove, by very 
[555-5571 



CHAP. IV.] 



OF FIRST PRINCIPLES IN GENERAL. 



435 



weak reasoning, the existence of external 
objects of sense; and Berkeley and Hume, 
sensible of the weakness of their arguments, 
have been led to deny their existence alto- 
gether. 

The ancient philosophers granted, that 
all knowledge must be grounded on first 
principles, and that there is no reasoning 
w.thout them. The Peripatetic philosophy 
was redundant rather than deficient in fist 
principles. Perhaps the abuse of them in 
that ancient system may have brought 
them into discredit in modern times ; for, 
as the best things may be abused, so that 
abuse is apt to give a disgust to the thing 
itself ; and as one extreme often leads into 
the opposite, this seems to have been the 
case in the respect paid to first principles 
in ancient and modern times. 

Des Cartes thought one principle, express- 
ed in one word, coyito, a sufficient foundation 
for his whole system, and asked no more. 

Mr Locke seems to think first principles 
of very small use. Knowledge consisting, 
according to him, in the perception of the 
agreement or disagreement of our ideas ; 
when we have clear ideas, and are able to 
compare them together, we may always fa- 
bricate first principles as often as we have 
occasion for them. Such differences we find 
among philosophers about first principles. 

It is likewise a question of some moment, 
whether the differences among men about 
first principles can be brought to any issue ? 
When in disputes one man maintains that 
to be a first principle which another denies, 
commonly both parties appeal to common 
sense, and so the matter rests. Now, is 
there no way of discussing this appeal ? Is 
there no mark or criterion, whereby first 
principles that are truly such, may be dis- 
tinguished from those that assume the cha- 
racter without a just title ? I shall humbly 
offer in the following propositions what 
appears to me to be agreeable to truth in 
these matters, always ready to change my 
opinion upon conviction. [558] 

1. First, I hold it to be certain, and even 
demonstrable, that all knowledge got by 
reasoning must be built upon first princi- 
ples.* 

This is as certain as that every house 
must have a foundation. The power of 
reasoning, in this respect, resembles the 
mechanical powers or engines ; it must 
have a fixed point to rest upon, otherwise 
it spends its force in the air, and produces 
no effect. 

When we examine, in the way of ana- 
lysis, the evidence of any proposition, either 
we find it self-evident, or it rests upon one 
or more propositions that support it. The 
same thing may be said of the propositions 



* So Aristotle, pluries.—H. 
[558, 559] 



that support it, and of those that support 
them, as far back as we can go. But we 
cannot go back in this track to infinity. 
Where then must this analysis stop ? It 
is evident that it must stop only when we 
come to propositions which support all that 
are built upon them, but are themselves 
supported by none — that is, to self-evident 
propositions. 

Let us again consider a synthetical proof of 
any kind, where we begin with the premises, 
and pursue a train of consequences, until we 
come to the last conclusion or thing to be 
proved. Here we must begin, either with 
self-evident propositions or with such as have 
been already proved. When the last is the 
case, the proof of the propositions, thus as- 
sumed, is a part of our proof; and the 
proof is deficient without it. Suppose then 
the deficiency supplied, and the proof com- 
pleted, is it not evident that it must set out 
with self-evident propositions, and that the 
whole evidence must rest upon them ? So 
that it appears to be demonstrable that, 
without first principles, analytical reasoning 
could have no end, and synthetical reason- 
ing could have no beginning ; and that 
every conclusion got by reasoning must 
rest with its whole weight upon first princi- 
ples, as the building does upon its founda- 
tion. [559] 

2. A second proposition is, That some 
first principles yield conclusions that are 
certain, others such as are probable, in va- 
rious degrees, from the highest probability 
to the lowest. 

In just reasoning, the strength or weak- 
ness of the conclusion will always corre- 
spond to that of the principles on which it is 
grounded. 

In a matter of testimony, it is self-evi- 
dent that the testimony of two is better 
than that of one, supposing them equal in 
character, and in their means of knowledge ; 
yet the simple testimony may be true, and 
that which is preferred to it may be false. 

When an experiment has succeeded in 
several trials, and the circumstances have 
been marked with care, there is a self-evi- 
dent probability of its succeeding in a new 
trial ; but there is no certainty. The pro- 
bability, in some cases, is much greater 
than in others ; because, in some cases, it 
is much easier to observe all the circum- 
stances that may have influence upon the 
event than in others. And it is possible 
that, after many experiments made with 
care, our expectation may be frustrated in 
a succeeding one, by the variation of some 
circumstance that has not, or perhaps 
could not be observed. 

Sir Isaac Newton has laid it down as a 

first principle in natural philosophy, that a 

property which has been found in all bodies 

upon which we have had access to make 

2f2 



436 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



("essay vt. 



experiments, and which has always been 
found in its quantity to be in exact propor- 
to the quantity of matter in every body, is 
to be held as an universal property of mat- 
ter. [560] 

This principle, as far as I know, has 
never been called in question. The evi- 
dence we have, that all matter is divisible, 
movable, solid, and inert, is resolvable 
into this principle ; and, if it be not true, 
we cannot have any rational conviction that 
all matter has those properties. From the 
same principle that great man has shewn 
that we have reason to conclude that all 
bodies gravitate towards each other. 

This principle, however, has not that 
kind of evidence which mathematical axioms 
have. It is not a necessary truth, whose 
contrary is impossible ; nor did Sir Isaac 
ever conceive it to be such. And, if it 
should ever be found, by just experiments, 
that there is any part in the composition of 
some bodies which has not gravity, the 
fact, if duly ascertained, must be admitted 
as an exception to the general law of gra- 
vitation. 

In games of chance, it is a first principle 
that every side of a die has an equal chance 
to be turned up ; and that, in a lottery, 
every ticket has an equal chance of being 
drawn out. From such first principles as 
these, which are the best we can have in 
such matters, we may deduce, by demon- 
strative reasoning, the precise degree of 
probability of every event in such games. 

But the principles of all this accurate 
and profound reasoning can never yield a 
certain conclusion, it being impossible to 
supply a defect in the first principles by any 
accuracy in the reasoning that is grounded 
upon them. As water, by its gravity, can 
rise no higher in its course than the foun- 
tain, however artfully it be conducted ; so 
no conclusion of reasoning can have a 
greater degree of evidence than the first 
principles from which it is drawn. 

From these instances, it is evident that, 
as there are some first principles that yield 
conclusions of absolute certainty, so there 
are others that can only yield probable con- 
clusions ; and that the lowest degree of 
probability must be grounded on first prin- 
ciples as well as absolute certainty.* 
[561] 

3. A third proposition is, That it would 
contribute greatly to the stability of human 
knowledge, and consequently to the im- 
provement of it, if the first principles upon 
which the various parts of it are grounded 
were pointed out and ascertained. 

We have ground to think so, both from 
facts, and from the nature of the thing. 

There are two branches of human know- 

. * Compare Stewart's "Elements," ii. p. 38.— H. 



ledge in which this method has been followed 
— to wit, mathematics and natural philoso- 
phy ; in mathematics, as far back as we have 
books. It is in this science only, that, for 
more than two thousand years since it be- 
gan to be cultivated, we find no sects, no 
contrary systems, and hardly any disputes ; 
or, if there have been disputes, they have 
ended as soon as the animosity of par- 
ties subsided, and have never been again 
revived. The science, once firmly esta- 
blished upon the foundation of a few axioms 
and definitions, as upon a rock, has grown 
from age so age, so as to become the loftiest 
and the most solid fabric that human rea- 
son can boast.* 

Natural philosophy, till less than two 
hundred years ago, remained in the same 
fluctuating state with the other sciences. 
Every new system pulled up the old by 
the roots. The system-builders, indeed, 
were always willing to accept of the aid 
of first principles, when they were of their 
side ; but, finding them insufficient to sup- 
port the fabric which their imagination had 
raised, they were only brought in as auxi- 
liaries, and so intermixed with conjectures, 
and with lame inductions, that their sys- 
tems were like Nebuchadnezzar's image, 
whose feet were partly of iron and partly 
of clay. 

Lord Bacon first delineated the only so- 
lid foundation on which natural philoso- 
phy can be built ; and Sir Isaac Newton 
reduced the principles laid down by Bacon 
into three or four axioms, which he calls 
regulcB philosophandi. From these, toge- 
ther with the phenomena observed by the 
senses, which he likewise lays down as 
first principles, he deduces, by strict rea- 
soning, the propositions contained in the 
third book of his "Principia," and in his 
" Optics ;" and by this means has raised a 
fabric in those two branches of natural 
philosophy, which is not liable to be shaken 
by doubtful disputation, but stands im- 
movable upon the basis of self-evident 
principles. [562] 

This fabric has been carried on by the 
accession of new discoveries ; but is no 
more subject to revolutions. 

The disputes about materia prima, sub- 
stantial forms, Nature's abhorring a va- 
cuum, and bodies having no gravitation 
in their proper place, are now no more. 
The builders in this work are not put to the 
necessity of holding a weapon in one hand 
while they build with the other ; their 
whole employment is to carry on the work. 

Yet it seems to be very probable, that, if 
natural philosophy had not been reared upon 
this solid foundation of self-evident princi- 
ples, it would have been to this day a field 



* See Stewart's «' Elements," ii. p. 43— H. 

[560, 562] 



chap, iv.] OF FIRST PRINCIPLES IN GENERAL. 



437 



of battle, wherein every inch of ground 
would have been disputed, and nothing fixed 
and determined. 

I acknowledge that mathematics and na- 
tural philosophy, especially the former, 
have this advantage of most other sciences, 
that it is less difficult to form distinct and 
determinate conceptions of the objects 
about which they are employed ; but, as 
this difficulty is not insuperable, it affords 
a good reason, indeed, why other sciences 
should have a longer infancy ; but no rea- 
son at all why they may not at last arrive 
at maturity, by the same steps as those of 
quicker growth. 

The facts I have mentioned may there- 
fore lead us to conclude, that, if in other 
branches of philosophy the first principles 
were laid down, as has been done in ma- 
thematics and natural philosophy, and the 
subsequent conclusions grounded upon them, 
this would make it much more easy to dis- 
tinguish what is solid and well supported 
from the vain fictions of human fancy. [563] 

But, laying aside facts, the nature of the 
thing leads to the same conclusion. 

For, wfien any system is grounded upon 
first principles, and deduced regularly from 
them, we have a thread to lead us through 
the labyrinth. The j udgment has a distinct 
and determinate object. The heterogeneous 
parts being separated, can be examined each 
by itself. 

The whole system is reduced to axioms, 
definitions, and deductions. These are ma- 
terials of very different nature, and to be 
measured by a very different standard ; and 
it is much more easy to judge of each, taken 
by itself, than to judge of a mass wherein 
they are kneaded together without distinc- 
tion. Let us consider how we judge of each 
of them. 

First, As to definitions, the matter is very 
easy. They relate only to words, and differ- 
ences about them may produce different 
ways of speaking, but can never produce 
different ways of thinking, while every man 
keeps to his own definitions. 

But, as there is not a more plentiful source 
of fallacies in reasoning than men's using 
the same word sometimes in one sense and 
at other times in another, the best means 
of preventing such fallacies, or of detecting 
them when they are committed, is defi- 
nitions of words as accurate as can be 
given. 

Secondly, As to deductions drawn from 
principles granted on both sides, I do not 
see how they can long be a matter of dis- 
pute among men who are not blinded by 
prejudice or partiality ; for the rules of 
reasoning by which inferences may be drawn 
from premises have been for two thousand 
years fixed with great unanimity. No man 
pretends to dispute the rules of reasoning 
[563-5G5] 



laid down by Aristotle and repeated by 
every writer in dialectics. [564] 

And we may observe by the way, that 
the reason why logicians have been so una- 
nimous in determining the rules of reason- 
ing, from Aristotle down to this day, seems 
to be, that they were by that great genius 
raised, in a scientific manner, from a few 
definitions and axioms. It may farther be 
observed, that, when men differ about a 
deduction, whether it follows from certain 
premises, this I think is always owing to 
their differing about some first principle. 
I shall explain this by an example. 

Suppose that, from a thing having begun 
to exist, one man infers that it must have 
had a cause ; another man does not admit 
the inference. Here it is evident, that the 
first takes it for a self-evident principle, that 
everything which begins to exist must have 
a cause. The other does not allow this to 
be self-evident. Let them settle this point, 
and the dispute will be at an end. 

Thus, I think, it appears, that, in matters 
of science, if the terms be properly explained, 
the first principles upon which the reason- 
ing is grounded be laid down and exposed 
to examination, and the conclusions re- 
gularly deduced from them, it might be 
expected that men of candour and capacity, 
who love truth, and have patience to ex- 
amine things coolly, might come to unani- 
mity with regard to the force of the deduc- 
tions, and that their differences might be 
reduced to those they may have about first 
principles. 

4. A fourth proposition is, That Nature 
hath not left us destitute of means whereby 
the candid and honest part of mankind may 
be brought to unanimity when they happen 
to differ about first principles. [565] 

When men differ about things that are 
taken to be first principles or self-evident 
truths, reasoning seems to be at an end. 
Each party appeals to common sense. When 
one man's common sense gives one deter- 
mination, another man's a contrary deter- 
mination, there seems to be no remedy but 
to leave every man to enjoy his own opinion. 
This is a common observation, and, I be- 
lieve, a just one, if it be rightly understood. 

It is in vain to reason with a man who 
denies the first principles on which the rea- 
soning is grounded. Thus, it would be in 
vain to attempt the proof of a proposition 
in Euclid to a man who denies the axioms. 
Indeed, we ought never to reason with men 
who deny first principles from obstinacy 
and unwillingness to yield to reason. 

But is it not possible, that men who really 
love truth, and are open to conviction, may 
differ about first principles ? 

I think it is possible, and that it cannot, 
without great want of charity, be denied to 
be possible- 



438 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[ES9AY VI. 



When this happens, every man who be- 
lieves that there is a real distinction between 
truth and error, and that the faculties which 
God has given us are not in their nature 
fallacious, must be convinced that there is 
a defect or a perversion of judgment on 
the one side or the other. 

A man of candour and humility will, in 
such a case, very naturally suspect his own 
judgment, so far as to be desirous to enter 
into a serious examination, even of what 
he has long held as a first principle. He 
will think it not impossible, that, although 
his heart be upright, his judgment may have 
been perverted, by education, by authority, 
by party zeal, or by some other of the com- 
mon causes of error, from the influence of 
which neither parts nor integrity exempt 
the human understanding. [566] 

In such a state of mind, so amiable, and 
so becoming every good man, has Nature 
left him destitute of any rational means by 
which he may be enabled, either to correct 
his judgment if it be wrong, or to confirm 
it if it be right ? 

I hope it is not so. I hope that, by the 
means which nature has furnished, con- 
troversies about first principles may be 
brought to an issue, and that the real lovers 
of truth may come to unanimity with regard 
to them. 

It is true that, in other controversies, 
the process by which the truth of a propo- 
sition is discovered, or its falsehood detected, 
is, by shewing its necessary connection with 
first principles, or its repugnancy to them 
It is true, likewise, that, when the contro- 
versy is, whether a preposition be itself a 
first principle, this process cannot be ap- 
plied. The truth, therefore, in controversies 
of this kind, labours under a peculiar dis- 
advantage. But it has advantantages of 
another kind to compensate this. 

1. For, in the first place, in such con- 
troversies, every man is a competent judge; 
and therefore it is difficult to impose upon 
mankind. 

To judge of first principles, requires no 
more than a sound mind free from preju- 
dice, and a distinct conception of the question. 
The learned and the unlearned, the phi- 
losopher and the day-labourer, are upon a 
level, and will pass the same judgment, 
when they are not misled by some bias, or 
taught to renounce their understanding 
from some mistaken religious principle. 

In matters beyond the reach of common 
understanding, the many are led by the 
few, and willingly yield to their authority. 
But, in matters of common sense, the few 
must yield to the many, when local and 
temporary prejudices are removed. No 
man is now moved by the subtle arguments 
of Zeno against motion, though, perhaps, he 
knows not how to answer them. [567] 



The ancient sceptical system furnishes a 
remarkable instance of this truth. That 
system, of which Pyrrho*was reputed the 
father, was carried down, through a succes- 
sion of ages, by very able and acute philo- 
sophers, who taught men to believe nothing 
at all, and esteemed it the highest pitch of 
human wisdom to withhold assent from 
every proposition whatsoever. It was sup- 
ported with very great subtilty and learning, 
as we see from the writings of Sextus Eiu- 
piricus, the only author of that sect whose 
writings have come down to our age. The 
assault of the sceptics against all science 
seems to have been managed with more art 
and address than the defence of the dog- 
matists. 

Yet, as this system was an insult upon the 
common sense of mankind, it died away of 
itself; and it would be in vain to attempt 
to revive it. The modern scepticism is very 
different from the ancient, otherwise it would 
not have been allowed a hearing ; and, when 
it has lost the grace of novelty, it will die 
away also, though it should never be refuted. 

The modern scepticism, I mean that of 
Mr Hume, is built upon principles which 
were very generally maintained by philo- 
sophers, though they did not see that they 
led to scepticism. Mr Hume, by tracing, 
with great acuteness and. ingenuity, the con- 
sequences of principles commonly received, 
has shewn that they overturn all knowledge, 
and at last overturn themselves, and leave 
the mind in perfect suspense. 

2. Secondly, We may observe that opin- 
ions which contradict first principles, are 
distinguished, from other errors, by this : — 
That they are not only false but absurd ; 
and, to discountenance absurdity, Nature 
hath given us a particular emotion — to wit, 
that of ridicule — which seems intended for 
this very purpose of putting out of counte- 
nance what is absurd, either in opinion or 
practice. [568] 

This weapon, when properly applied, cuts 
with as keen an edge as argument. Nature 
hath furnished us with the first to expose 
absurdity ; as with the last to refute error. 
Both are well fitted for their several offices, 
and are equally friendly to truth when pro- 
perly used. 

Both may be abused to serve the cause 
of error ; but the same degree of judgment 
which serves to detect the abuse of argu- 
ment in false reasoning, serves to detect the 
abuse of ridicule when it is wrong directed. 

Some have, from nature, a happier talent 
for ridicule than others ; and the same 
thing holds with regard to the talent of 
reasoning. Indeed, I conceive there is 
hardly any absurdity, which, when touched 
with the pencil of a Lucian, a Swift, or a 
Voltaire, would not be put out of counte- 
nance, when there is not some religious 
[566-568] 



CHAP. IV.] 



OF FIRST PRINCIPLES IN GENERAL. 



439 



panic, or very powerful prejudice, to blind 
the understanding. 

But it must be acknowledged that the 
emotion of ridicule, even when most natu- 
ral, may be stifled by an emotion of a con- 
trary nature, and cannot operate till that 
is removed. 

Thus, if the notion of sanctity is annexed 
to an object, it is no longer a laughable 
matter ; and this visor must be pulled off 
before it appears ridiculous. Hence we 
see, that notions which appear most ridicu- 
lous to all who consider them coolly and in- 
differently, have no such appearance to 
those who never thought of them but under 
the impression of religious awe and dread. 

Even where religion is not concerned, 
the novelty of an opinion to those who are 
too fond of novelties ; the gravity and 
solemnity with which it is introduced ; the 
opinion we have entertained of the author ; 
its apparent connection with principles 
already embraced, or subserviency to in- 
terests which we have at heart ; and, above 
all, its being fixed in our minds at that time 
of life when we receive implicitly what we 
are taught — may cover its absurdity, and 
fascinate the understanding for a time. 
[5G9] 

But, if ever we are able to view it naked, 
and stripped of those adventitious circum- 
stances from which it borrowed its import- 
ance and authority, the natural emotion of 
ridicule will exert its force. An absurdity 
can be entertained by men of sense no longer 
than it wears a mask. When any man is 
found who has the skill or the boldness to 
pull off the mask, it can no longer bear the 
light ; it slinks into dark corners for a while, 
and then is no more heard of, but as an ob- 
ject of ridicule. 

Thus I conceive, that first principles, 
which are really the dictates of common 
sense, and directly opposed to absurdities 
in opinion, will always, from the constitu- 
tion of human nature, support themselves, 
and gain rather than lose ground among 
mankind. 

3. Thirdly, It may be observed, that, al- 
though it is contrary to the nature of first 
principles to admit of direct or apodictical 
proof ; yet there are certain ways of reason- 
ing even about them, by which those that 
are just and solid may be confirmed, and 
those that are false may be detected. It 
may here be proper to mention some of the 
topics from which we may reason in matters 
of this kind. 

First, It is a good argument ad hominem, 
if it can be shewn that a first principle 
which a man rejects, stands upon the same 
footing with others which he admits : for, 
when this is the case, he must be guilty of 
an inconsistency who holds the one and 
rejects the other. 
[569-571] 



Thus the faculties of consciousness, of 
memory, of external sense, and of reason, 
are all equally the gifts of nature. No good 
reason can be assigned for receiving the 
testimony of one of them, which is not of 
equal force with regard to the others. The 
greatest sceptics admit the testimony of 
consciousness, and allow that what it testi- 
fies is to be held as a first principle. If, 
therefore, they reject the immediate testi- 
mony of sense or of memory, they are 
guilty of an inconsistency. [570] 

Secondly, A first principle may admit of 
a proof ad absurdum e 

In this kind of proof, which is very com- 
mon in mathematics, we suppose the con- 
tradictory proposition to be true. We trace 
the consequences of that supposition in a 
train of reasoning ; and, if we find any of 
its necessary consequences to be manifestly 
absurd, we conclude the supposition from 
which it followed to be false ; and, there* 
fore its contradictory to be true. 

There is hardly any proposition, especially 
of those that may claim the character of 
first principles, that stands alone and un- 
connected. It draws many others along 
with it in a chain that cannot be broken. 
He that takes it up must bear the burden 
of all its consequences ; and, if that is too 
heavy for him to bear, he must not pretend 
to take it up. 

Thirdly, I conceive that the consent of 
ages and nations, of the learned and un- 
learned, ought to have great authority with 
regard to first principles, where every man 
is a competent judge. 

Our ordinary conduct in life is built upon 
first principles, as well as our speculations 
in philosophy ; and every motive to action 
supposes some belief. When we find a 
general agreement among men, in principles 
that concern human life, this must have 
great authority with every sober mind that 
loves truth. 

It is pleasant to observe the fruitless 
pains which Bishop Berkeley takes to shew 
that his system of the non-existence of a 
material world did not contradict the senti- 
ments of the vulgar, but those only of the 
philosophers. 

With good reason he dreaded more to 
oppose the authority of vulgar opinion in a 
matter of this kind, than all the schools of 
philosophers. [571] 

Here, perhaps, it will be said. What has 
authority to do in matters of opinion ? Is 
truth to be determined by most votes ? Or 
is authority to be again raised out of its 
grave to tyrannise over mankind ? 

I am aware that, in this age, an advo- 
cate for authority has a very unfavourable 
plea ; but I wish to give no more to author- 
ity than is its due. 

Most justly do we honour the nan" 



140 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



those benefactors to mankind who have con- 
tributed more or less to break the yoke of 
that authority which deprives men of the 
natural, the unalienable right of judging 
for themselves; but, while we indulge a 
just animosity against this authority, and 
against all who would subject us to its 
tyranny, let us remember how common the 
folly is, of going from one faulty extreme 
into the opposite. 

Authority, though a very tyrannical mis- 
tress to private judgment, may yet, on some 
occasions, be a useful handmaid. This is 
all she is entitled to, and this is all I plead 
in her behalf. 

The justice of this plea will appear by 
putting a case in a science, in which, of all 
sciences, authority is acknowledged to have 
least weight. 

Suppose a mathematician has made a 
discovery in that science which he thinks 
important ; that he has put his demonstra- 
tion in just order ; and, after examining it 
with an attentive eye, has found no flaw in 
it, I would ask, Will there not be still in 
his breast some diffidence, some jealousy, 
lest the ardour of invention may have made 
him overlook some false step ? This must 
be granted. [572] 

He commits his demonstration to the ex- 
amination of a mathematical friend, whom 
he esteems a competent judge, and waits 
with impatience the issue of his judgment. 
Here I would ask again, Whether the verdict 
of his friend, according as it is favourable 
or unfavourable, will not greatly increase or 
diminish his confidence in his own judgment? 
Most certainly it will, and it ought. 

If the judgment of his friend agree with 
his own, especially if it be confirmed by two 
or three able judges, he rests secure of his 
discovery without farther examination ; but, 
if it be unfavourable, he is brought back 
into a kind of suspense, until the part that 
is suspected undergoes a new and a more 
rigorous examination. 

I hope what is supposed in this case is 
agreeable to nature, and to the. experience 
of candid and modest men on such occa- 
sions ; yet here we see a man's judgment, 
even in a mathematical demonstration, con- 
scious of some feebleness in itself, seeking 
the aid of authority to support it, greatly 
strengthened by that authority, and hardly 
able to stand erect against it, without some 
new aid. 

Society in judgment, of those who are 
esteemed fair and competent judges, has 
effects very similar to those of civil society : 
it gives strength and courage to every indi- 
vidual ; it removes that timidity which is 
as naturally the companion of solitary judg- 
ement, as of a solitary man in the state of 
63$ure. 

£$£us judge for ourselves, therefore ; but 



let us not disdain to take that aid from the 
authority of other competent judges, which 
a mathematician thinks it necessary to take 
in that science which, of all sciences, has 
least to do with authority. 

In a matter of common sense, every man 
is no less a competent judge than a mathe- 
matician is in a mathematical demonstra- 
tion ; and there must be a great presump- 
tion that the judgment of mankind, in such 
a matter, is the natural issue of those facul- 
ties which God hath given them. Such a 
judgment can be erroneous only when there 
is some cause of the error, as general as the 
error is. When this can be shewn to be the 
case, I acknowledge it ought to have its due 
weight. But, to suppose a general devia- 
tion from truth among mankind in things 
self-evident, of which no cause can be 
assigned, is highly unreasonable. [573] 

Perhaps it may be thought impossible 
to collect the general opinion of men upon 
any point whatsoever ; and, therefore, that 
this authority can serve us in no stead in 
examining first principles. But I appre- 
hend that, in many cases, this is neither 
impossible nor difficult. 

Who can doubt whether men have uni- 
versally believed the existence of a mate- 
rial world ? Who can doubt whether men 
have universally believed that every change 
that happens in nature must have a cause ? 
Who can doubt whether men have uni- 
versally believed, that there is a right and 
a wrong in human conduct ; some things 
that merit blame, and others that are en- 
titled to approbation ? 

The upiversality of these opinions, and 
of many such that might be named, is suf- 
ficiently evident, from the whole tenor of 
human conduct, as far as our acquaintance 
reaches, and from the history of all ages 
and nations of which we have any records. 

There are other opinions that appear to 
be universal, from what is common in the 
structure of all languages. 

Language is the express image and pic- 
ture of human thoughts ; and from the 
picture we may draw some certain conclu- 
sions concerning the original. 

We find in all languages the same parts 
of speech ; we find nouns, substantive and 
adjective; verbs, active and passive, in 
their various tenses, numbers, and moods. 
Some rules of syntax are the same in all 
languages. 

Now, what is common in the structure 
of languages, indicates an uniformity of 
opinion in those things upon which that 
structure is grounded. [574] 

The distinction between substances, and 
the qualities belonging to them ; between 
thought and the being that thinks ; be- 
tween thought and the objects of thought ; 
is to be found in the structure of all lan- 
[572-571] 



chap, v.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT TRUTHS. 



441 



guages. And, therefore, systems of philo- 
sophy, which abolish those distinctions, wage 
war with the common sense of mankind. 

We are apt to imagine that those who 
formed languages were no metaphysicians ; 
but the first principles of all sciences are 
the dictates of common sense, and lie open 
to all men ; and every man who has con- 
sidered the structure of language in a phi- 
losophical light, will find infallible proofs that 
those who have framed it, and those who 
use it with understanding have the power 
of making accurate distinctions, and of form- 
ing general conceptions, as well as philoso- 
phers. Nature has given those powers to 
all men, and they can use them when occa- 
sions require it, but they leave it to the 
philosophers to give names to them, and to 
descant upon their nature. In like manner, 
nature has given eyes to all men, and they 
can make good use of them ; but the struc- 
ture of the eye, and the theory of vision, is 
the business of philosophers. 

Fourthly^ Opinions that appear so early 
in the minds of men that they cannot be 
the effect of education or of false reason- 
ing, have a good claim to be considered as 
first principles. Thus, the belief we have, 
that the persons about us are living and in- 
telligent beings, is a belief for which, per- 
haps, we can give some reason, when we 
are. able to reason ; but we had this belief 
before we could reason, and before we could 
learn it by instruction. It seems, there- 
fore, to be an immediate effect of our con- 
stitution. 

The last topic I shall mention is, when 
an opinion is so necessary in the conduct of 
life, that, without the belief of it, a man 
must be led into a thousand absurdities in 
practice, such an opinion, when we can 
give no other reason for it, may safely be 
taken for a first principle. [575] 

Thus I have endeavoured to shew, that, 
although first principles are not capable of 
direct proof, yet differences, that may hap- 
pen with regard to them among men of 
candour, are not without remedy; that 
Nature has not left us destitute of means 
by which we may discover errors of this 
kind ; and that there are ways of reason- 
ing, with regard to first principles, by which 
those that are truly such may be distin- 
guished from vulgar errors or prejudices. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT 
TRUTHS. 

" Surely," says Bishop Berkeley, " it is 
a work well deserving our pains to make 
a strict inquiry concerning the first princi- 
ples of knowledge ; to sift and examine 
[575, 576] 



them on all sides." What was said in the 
last chapter is intended both to shew the 
importance of this inquiry, and to make it 
more easy. 

But, in order that such an inquiry may ba 
actually made, it is necessary that the first 
principles of knowledge be distinguished 
from other truths, and presented to view, 
that they may be sifted and examined on 
all sides. In order to this end, I shall 
attempt a detail of those I take to be such, 
and of the reasons why I think them entitled 
to that character. [576] 

If the enumeration should appear to some 
redundant, to others deficient, and to others 
both— if things which I conceive to be first 
principles, should to others appear to be 
vulgar errors, or to be truths which derive 
their evidence from other truths, and there- 
fore not first principles - in these things 
every man must judge for himself. I shall 
rejoice to see an enumeration more perfect 
in any or in all of those respects ; being 
persuaded that the agreement of men of 
judgment and candour in first principles 
would be of no less consequence to the ad- 
vancement of knowledge in general, than 
the agreement of mathematicians in the 
axioms of geometry has been to the ad- 
vancement of that science. 

The truths that fall within the compass 
of human knowledge, whether they be self- 
evident, or deduced from those that are 
self-evident, may be reduced to two classes. 
They are either necessary and immutable 
truths, whose contrary is impossible; or 
they are contingent and mutable, depend- 
ing upon some effect of will and power, 
which had a beginning, and may have an 
end. 

That a cone is the third part of a cylin- 
der of the same base and the same altitude, 
is a necessary truth. It depends not upon 
the will and power of any being. It is im- 
mutably true, and the contrary impossible. 
That the sun is the centre about which the 
earth, and the other planets of our system, 
perform their revolutions, is a truth ; but 
it is nut a necessary truth. It depends 
upon the power and will of that Being who 
made the sun and all the planets, and who 
gave them those motions that seemed best 
to him. 

If all truths were necessary truths, there 
would be no occasion for different tenses in 
the verbs by which they are expressed. 
What is true in the present time, would be 
true in the past and future; and there 
would be no change or variation of anything 
in nature. 

We use the present tense in expressing 
necessary truths; but it is only because 
there is no flexion of the verb which in 
ejhides all times. When I say that t^ 
is the half of six, I use the preser' 



442 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



only ; but I mean to express not only what 
now is, but what always was, and always will 
be ; and so every proposition is to be under- 
stood by which we mean to express a neces- 
sary truth. Contingent truths are of an- 
other nature. As they are mutable, they 
may be true at one time, and not at an- 
other ; and, therefore, the expression of 
them must include some point or period of 
time. [577] 

If language had been a contrivance of 
philosophers, they would probably have 
given some flexion to the indicative mood 
of verbs, which extended to all times past, 
present, and future ; for such a flexion only 
would be fit to express necessary proposi- 
tions, which have no relation to time. But 
there is no language, as far as I know, in 
which such a flexion of verbs is to be found. 
Because the thoughts and discourse of men 
are seldom employed about necessary truths, 
but commonly about such as are contin- 
gent, languages are fitted to express the 
last rather than the first. 

The distinction commonly made between 
abstract truths, and those that express mat- 
ters of fact, or real existences, coincides in 
a great measure, but not altogether, with 
that between necessary and contingent 
truths. The necessary truths that fall 
within our knowledge are, for the most part, 
abstract truths. We must except the ex- 
istence and nature of the Supreme Being, 
which is necessary. Other existences are 
the effects of will and power. They had a 
beginning, and are mutable. Their nature 
is such as the Supreme Being was pleased 
to give them. Their attributes and rela- 
tions must depend upon the nature God has 
given them, the powers with which he has 
endowed them, and the situation in which 
he hath placed them. 

The conclusions deduced by reasoning 
from first principles, will commonly be ne- 
cessary or contingent, according as the 
principles are from which they are drawn. 
On the one hand, I take it to be certain, 
that whatever can, by just reasoning, be 
inferred from a principle that is necessary, 
must be a necessary truth, and that no 
contingent truth can be inferred from prin- 
ciples that are necessary. • [578] 

Thus, as the axioms in mathematics are 
all necessary truths, so are all the conclu- 
sions drawn from C;em ; that is, the whole 
body of that science. But from no mathe- 
matical truth can we deduce the existence 
of anything ; not even of the objects of the 
science. 

On the other hand, I apprehend there 
are very few cases in which we can, from 
principles that are contingent, deduce truths 
that are necessary. I can only recollect 

* See Stewart's '* Elements," ii. p. 33. 



One instance of this kind — namely — that, 
from the existence of things contingent and 
mutable, we can infer the existence of an 
immutable and eternal cause of them. 

As the minds of men are occupied much 
more about truths that are contingent than 
about those that are necessary, I shall first 
endeavour to point out the principles of the 
former kind. 

1. First, then, I hold, as a first principle, 
the existence of everything of which I am 
conscious. 

Consciousness is an operation of the 
understanding of its own kind, and cannot 
be logically defined. The objects of it are 
our present pains, our pleasures, our hopes, 
our fears, our desires, our doubts, our 
thoughts of every kind ; in a word, all the 
passions, and all the actions and operations 
of our own minds, while they are present. 
We may remember them when they are 
past ; but we are conscious of them only 
while they are present. 

When a man is conscious of pain, he is 
certain of its existence ; when he is con- 
scious that he doubts or believes, he is 
certain of the existence of those operations. 

But the irresistible conviction he has of 
the reality of those operations is not the 
effect of reasoning ; it is immediate and 
intuitive. The existence therefore of those 
passions and operations of our minds, of 
which we are conscious, is a first principle, 
which nature requires us to believe upon 
her authority. [579] 

If I am asked to prove that I cannot be 
deceived by consciousness — to prove that it 
is not a fallacious sense — I can find nc proof. 
I cannot find any antecedent truth from 
which it is deduced, or upon which its evi- 
dence depends. It seems to disdain any 
such derived authority, and to claim my 
assent in its own right. 

If any man could be found so frantic as 
to deny that he thinks, while he is conscious 
of it, I may wonder, I may laugh, or I may 
pity him, but I cannot reason the matter 
with him. We have no common principles 
from which we may reason, and therefore 
can never join issue in an argument. 

This, I think, is the only principle of 
common sense that has never directly been 
called in question. * It seems to be so firmly 
rooted in the minds of men, as to retain its 
authority with the greatest sceptics. Mr 
Hume, after annihilating body and mind, 
time and space, action and causation, and 
even his own mind, acknowledges the reality 
of the thoughts, sensations, and passions of 
which he is conscious. 



* It could not possibly be called in question. For, 
in doubting the fact of his consciousness, the sceptic 
must at leas' affirm the fact of his doubt ; but to 
affirm a doubt is to affirm the consciousness of it ; 
the doubt would, therefore, be self-contradictory— 
i. e., annihilate itself. — H. 

[577-579] 



chap. v.J FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT TRUTHS. 



443 



No philosopher has attempted, by any 
Hypothesis, to account for this consciousness 
of our own thoughts, and the certain know- 
ledge of their real existence which accom- 
panies it. By this they seem to acknow- 
ledge that this at least is an original power 
of the mind ^ a power by which we not only 
have ideas, but original judgments, and the 
knowledge of real existence. 

I cannot reconcile this immediate know- 
ledge of the operations of our own minds 
with Mr Locke's theory, that all know- 
ledge consists in perceiving the agreement 
and disagreement of ideas. What are the 
ideas, from whose comparison the knowledge 
of our own thoughts results ? Or what are 
the agreements or disagreements which con- 
vince a man that he is in pain when he 
feels it ? [580] 

Neither can I reconcile it with Mr Hume's 
theory, that to believe the existence of any- 
thing, is nothing else than to have a strong 
and lively conception of it ; or, at most, 
that belief is only some modification of the 
idea which is the object of belief. For, not 
to mention that propositions, not ideas, are 
the object of belief, in all that variety of 
thoughts and passions of which we are con- 
scious we believe the existence of the weak 
as well as of the strong, the faint as well as 
the lively. No modification of the opera- 
tions of our minds disposes us to the least 
doubt of their real existence. 

As, therefore, the real existence of our 
thoughts, and of all the operations and feel- 
ings of our own minds, is believed by all 
men — as we find ourselves incapable of 
doubting it, and as incapable of offering any 
proof of it — it may justly be considered as a 
first principle, or dictate of common sense. 

But, although this principle rests upon 
no other, a very considerable and import- 
ant branch of human knowledge rests upon 
it. 

For from this source of consciousness is 
derived all that we know, and indeed all 
that we can know, of the structure and of 
the powers of our own minds ; from which 
we may conclude, that there is no branch 
of knowledge that stands upon a firmer 
foundation ; for surely no kind of evidence 
can go beyond that of consciousness. 

How does it come to pass, then, that in 
this branch of knowledge there are so many 
and so contrary systems ? so many subtile 
controversies that are never brought to an 
issue ? and so little fixed and determined ? 
Is it possible that philosophers should differ 
most where they have the surest means of 
agreement — where everything is built upon 
a species of evidence which all men ac- 
quiesce in, and hold to be the most certain ? 
[581] 

This strange phsenomenon may, I think, 
be accounted for, if we distinguish between 
[580-582] 



consciousness and reflection, which are often 
improperly confounded * 

The first is common to all men at all 
times ; but is insufficient of itself to give us 
clear and distinct notions of the opera- 
tions of which we are conscious, and of 
their mutual relations and minute distinc- 
tions. The second — to wit, attentive reflec- 
tion upon those operations, making them 
objects of thought, surveying them atten- 
tively, and examining them on all sides — is 
so far from being common to all men, that it 
is the lot of very few. The greatest part 
of men, either through want of capacity, or 
from other causes, never reflect attentively 
upon the operations of their own minds. 
The habit of this reflection, even in those 
whom nature has fitted for it, is not to be at- 
tained without much pains and practice. 

We can know nothing of the immediate 
objects of sight, but by the testimony of our 
eyes ; and I apprehend that, if mankind 
had found as great difficulty in giving at- 
tention to the objects of sight, as they find 
in attentive reflection upon the operations 
of their own minds, our knowledge of the 
first might have been in as backward a state 
as our knowledge of the last. 

But this darkness will not last for ever. 
Light will arise upon this benighted part of 
the intellectual globe. When any man is 
so happy as to delineate the powers of the 
human mind as they really are in nature, 
men that are free from prejudice, and cap- 
able of reflection, will recognise their own 
features in the picture ; and then the wonder 
will be, how things so obvious could be so 
long wrapped up in mystery and darkness ; 
how men could be carried away by false 
theories and conjectures, when the truth 
was to be found in their own breasts if they 
had but attended to it. 

2. Another first principle, I think, is, 
That the thoughts of which I am cnnsci>vs, 
are the thoughts of a being which I call 

MYSELF, my MIND, mi/ PERSON. [582] 

The thoughts and feelings of which we are 
conscious are continually changing, and the 
thought of this moment is not the thought 
of the last ; but something which I call my- 
self, remains under this change of thought. 
This self has the same relation to all the 
successive thoughts I am conscious of — they 
are all my thoughts ; and every thought 
which is not my thought, must be the 
thought of some other person. 

If any man asks a proof of this, I confess 
I can give none ; there is an evidence in the 
proposition itself which I am unable to re- 
sist. Shall I think that thought can stand 
by itself without a thinking being ? or that 
ideas can feel pleasure or pain ? My nature 
dictates to me that it is impossible. 



* Compare above, pp. 



b,258,a — H. 



444 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI, 



And that nature has dictated the same to 
all men, appears from the structure of all 
languages : for in all languages men have 
expressed thinking, reasoning, willing, lov- 
ing, hating, by personal verbs, which, from 
their nature, require a person who thinks, 
reasons, wills, loves, or hates. From which 
it appears, that men have been taught by 
nature to believe that thought requires a 
thinker, reason a reasoner, and love a lover. 

Here we must leave Mr Hume, who con- 
ceives it to be a vulgar error, that, besides 
the thoughts we are conscious of, there is a 
mind which is the subject of those thoughts. 
If the mind be anything else than impres- 
sions and ideas, it must be a word without 
a meaning. The mind, therefore, accord- 
ing to this philosopher, is a word which 
signifies a bundle of perceptions ; or, when 
he defines it more accurately — " It is that 
succession of related ideas and impressions, 
of which we have an intimate memory and 
consciousness." 

I am, therefore, that succession of related 
ideas and impressions of which I have the 
intimate memory and consciousness. 

But who is the / that has this memory 
and consciousness of a succession of ideas 
and impressions ? Why, it is nothing but 
that succession itself. [583] 

Hence, I learn, that this succession of 
ideas and impressions intimately remembers, 
and is conscious of itself. I would wish to 
be farther instructed, whether the impres- 
sions remember and are conscious of the 
ideas, or the ideas remember and are con- 
scious of the impressions, or if both remem- 
ber and are conscious of both ? and whether 
the ideas remember those that come after 
them, as well as those that were before them ? 
These are questions naturally arising from 
this system, that have not yet been explained. 

This, however, is clear, that this succes- 
sion of ideas and impressions, not only re- 
members and is conscious, but that it judges, 
reasons, affirms, denies — nay, that it eats 
and drinks, and is sometimes merry and 
sometimes sad. 

If these things can be ascribed to a suc- 
cession of ideas and impressions, in* a con- 
sistency with common sense, I should be 
very glad to know what is nonsense. 

The scholastic philosophers have been 
wittily ridiculed, by representing them as 
disputing upon ihis question — Numchimcera 
bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secun- 
das intentiones ? and I believe the wit of 
man cannot invent a more ridiculous ques- 
tion. But, if Mr Hume's philosophy be 
admitted, this question deserves to be 
treated more gravely : for if, as we learn 
from this philosophy, a succession of ideas 
and impressions may eat, and drink, and 
be merry, I see no good reason why a 
chimera,- which, if not the same is of kin to 



an idea, may not chew the cud upon that 
kind of food which the schoolmen call second 
intentions.* 

3. Another first principle I take to be — 
That- those things did really/happen which I 
distinct if rememher. [584] 

This has one of the surest marks of a first 
principle ; for no man ever pretended to 
prove it, and yet no man in his wits calls it 
in question : the testimony of memory, like 
that of consciousness, is immediate ; it 
claims our assent upon its own authority, -f- 

Suppose that a learned counsel, in defence 
of a client against the concurring testimony 
of witnesses of credit, should insist upon a 
new topic to invalidate the testimony. 
" Admitting," says he, " the integrity of 
the witnesses, and that they distinctly re- 
member what they have given in evidence- 
it does not follow that the prisoner is guilty. 
It has never been proved that the most 
distinct memory may not be fallacious. 
Shew me any necessary connection between 
that act of the mind which we call memory, 
and the past existence of the event remem- 
bered. No man has ever offered a shadow 
of argument to prove such a connection ; 
yet this is one link of the chain of proof 
against the prisoner ; and, if it have no 
strength, the whole proof falls to the ground : 
until this, therefore, be made evident — until 
it can be proved that we may safely rest 
upon the testimony of memory for the truth 
of past events — no judge or jury can justly 
take away the life of a citizen upon so 
doubtful a point." 

I believe we may take it for granted, that 
this argument from a learned counsel would 
have no other effect upon the judge or jury, 
than to convince them that he was dis- 
ordered in his judgment. Counsel is allowed 
to plead everything for a client that is fit to 
persuade or to move ; yet I believe no 
counsel ever had the boldness to plead this 
topic. And for what reason ? For no other 
reason, surely, but because it is absurd. 
Now, what is absurd at the bar, is so in the 
philosopher's chair. What would be ridi- 
culous, if delivered to a jury of honest sen- 
sible citizens, is no less so when delivered 
gravely in a philosophical dissertation. 

Mr Hume has not, as far as I remember, 
directly called in question the testimony of 

* All this criticism of Hume proceeds upon the 
erroneous hypothesis that he was a Dogmatist. He 
was a Sceptic— that is, he accepted the principles as- 
sertedfby the prevalent Dogmatism ; and only shewed 
that such and such coi. elusions were, on these prin- 
ciples, inevitable. The absurdity was not Hume's, but 
Locke's. This is the kind of criticism, however, 
with which Hume is generally assailed. — H. 

f The datum of Memory does not stand upon^the 
same ground as the.datum of simple Consciousness. 
In so far as memory- is consciousness, it cannot he 
denied We cannot, without contradiction, deny the 
fact of memory as a present consciousness; but we 
may, without contradiction, suppose that the past 
given therein, is only an illusion of the present.— H. 
f 583, 584] 



cnAP. v.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT TRUTHS. 445 



memory ; but he has laid down the premises 
by which its authority is overturned, leav- 
ing it to his reader to draw the conclu- 
sion. [585] 

He labours to shew that the belief or 
assent which always attends the memory 
and senses is nothing but the vivacity of 
those perceptions which they present. He 
shews very clearly, that this vivacity gives 
no ground to believe the existence of ex- 
ternal objects. And it is obvious that it 
can give as little giound to believe the past 
existence of the objects of memory. 

Indeed the theory concerning ideas, so 
generally received by philosophers, destroys 
all the authority of memory, as well as the 
authority of the senses. Des Cartes, Ma- 
lebranche, and Locke, were aware that this 
theory made it necessary for th m to find 
out arguments to prove the existence of ex- 
ternal objects, which the vulgar believe 
upon the bare authority of their senses ; 
but those philosophers were not aware that 
this theory made it equally necessary for 
them to find arguments to prove the exist- 
ence of things past, which Ave remember, 
and to support the authority of memory. 

All the arguments they advanced to sup- 
port the authority of our senses, were easily 
refuted by Bishop Berkeley and Mr Hume, 
being indeed" very weak and inconclusive. 
And it would have been as.eusy to answer 
every argument they could have brought, 
consistent with their theory, to support the 
authority of memory. 

For, according to that theory, the im- 
mediate object of memory, as well as of 
every other operation of the understanding, 
is an idea present in the mind. And, from 
the present existence of this idea of me- 
mory I am left to infer, by reasoning, that, 
six months or six years ago, there did ex- 
ist an object similar to, this idea. [586] 

But what is there in the idea that can 
lead me to this conclusion ? What mark 
does it bear of the date of its archetype ? 
Or what evidence have I that it had an 
archetype, and that it is not the first of its 
kind? 

Perhaps it will be said, that this idea or 
image in the mind must have had a cause." 
I admit that, if there is such an image in 
the mind, it must have had a cause, and a 
cause able to produce the effect ;• but what 
can we infer from its having a cause ? Does 
it follow that the effect is a type, an image, 
a copy of its cause ? Then it will follow, 
that a picture is an image of the painter, 
and a coach of the coachmaker. 

A past event may be known by reasoning ; 
but that is not remembering it. When I 
remember a thing distinctly, I disdain 
equally to hear reasons for it or against it. 
And so I think does every man in his 



£585-58? ] 



4. Another first principle is, Our own per- 
sonal identity and continued existence, as 
far back as we remember anything distinctly. 

This we know immediately, and not 
by reasoning. It seems, indeed, to be a 
part of the testimony of memory. Every- 
thing we remember has such a relation to 
ourselves as to imply necessarily our ex- 
istence at the time remembered. And 
there cannot be a more palpable absurdity 
than that a man should remember what 
happened before he existed. He must 
therefore have existed as far back as he re- 
members anything distinctly, if his memory 
be not fallacious. This principle, there- 
fore, is so connected with the last mention- 
ed, that it may be doubtful whether both 
ought not to be included in one. Let 
every one judge of this as he<sees reason. 
The proper notion of identity, and the sen- 
timents of Mr Locke on this subject, have 
been considered before, under the head of 
Memory. [587] 

5. Another first principle is, That those 
things do really exist which we distinctly 
perceive by our senses, and are what we 
perceive them to be. 

It is too evident to need proof, that all 
men are by nature led to give implicit faith 
to the distinct testimony of their senses, 
long before they are capable of any bias 
from prejudices of education or of philo- 
sophy. 

How came we at first to know that there 
are certain beings about us whom we call 
father, and mother, and sisters, and bro- 
thers, and nurse ? Was it not by the 
testimony of our senses ? How did these 
persons convey to us any information or 
instruction ? Was it not by means of our 
senses ? 

It is evident we can have no communi- 
cation, no correspondence or society with 
any created being, but by means of our 
senses. And, until we rely upon their testi- 
mony, we must consider ourselves as being 
alone in the universe, without any fellow- 
creature, living or inanimate, and be left to 
converse with our own thoughts. 

Bishop Berkeley surely did not duly con- 
sider that it is by means of the material 
world that we have any correspondence 
with thinking beings, or any knowledge of 
their existence ; and that, by depriving us 
of the material world, he deprived us, at 
the same time, of family, friends, country, 
and every human creature ; of every object 
of affection, esteem, or concern, except our- 
selves. 

The good Bishop surely never intended 
this. He was too warm a friend, too zeal- 
ous a patriot, and too good a Christian, to 
be capable of such a thought. He was not 
aware of the consequences of his system, 
and therefore they ought not to be imputed 



448 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



to him ; but we must impute them to the 
system itself. It stifles every generous and 
social principle. [588] 

When I consider myself as speaking to 
men who hear me, and can judge of what 
I say, I feel that respect which is due to 
such an audience. I feel an enjoyment in 
a reciprocal communication of sentiments 
with candid and ingenious friends ; and my 
soul blesses the Author of my being, who 
has made me capable of this manly and 
rational entertainment. 

But the Bishop shews me, that this is 
all a dream ; that I see not a human face ; 
that all the objects I see, and hear, and 
handle, are only the ideas of my own mind ; 
ideas are my only companions. Cold com- 
pany, indeed ! Every social affection freezes 
at the thought ! 

But, my Lord Bishop, are there no minds 
left in the universe but my own ? 

Yes, indeed; it is only the material 
world that is annihilated ; everything else 
remains as it was. 

This seems to promise some comfort in 
my forlorn solitude. But do I see those 
minds ? No. Do I see their ideas ? No. 
Nor do they see me or my ideas. They 
are, then, no more to me than the inhabit- 
ants of Solomon's isles, or of the moon ; 
and my melancholy solitude returns. Every 
social tie is broken, and every social affec- 
tion is stifled. 

This dismal system, which, if it could be 
believed, would deprive men of every social 
comfort, a very good Bishop, by strict and 
accurate reasoning, deduced from the prin- 
ciples commonly received by philosophers 
concerning ideas. The fault is not in the 
reasoning, but in the principles from which 
it is drawn. 

All the arguments urged by Berkeley and 
Hume, against the existence of a material 
world, are grounded upon this principle — 
that we do not perceive external objects 
themselves, but certain images or ideas in 
our own minds.* But this is no dictate of 
common sense, but directly contrary to the 
sense of all who have not been taught it by 
philosophy. [589] 

We have before examined the reasons 
given by philosophers to prove that ideas, 
and not external objects, are the immediate 
objects of perception, and the instances 
given to prove the senses fallacious. With- 
out repeating what has before been said 
upon those points, we shall only here ob- 
serve, that, if external objects be perceived 
immediately, we have the same reason to 



* Idealism, as- already noticed, rests equally well, 
if not better, on the hypothesis that what we perceive 
(or are conscious of in perception) is only a modifica- 
tion of mind, as on the hypothesis that, in perception, 
we are conscious of a representative entity distinct 
from mind as from the external reality. — H. 



believe their existence as philosophers have 
to believe the existence of ideas, while they 
hold them to be the immediate objects of 
perception.* 

6. Another first principle, I think, is, 
That we have some degree of power over 
our actions, and the determinations of our 
will. 

All power must be derived from the 
fountain of power, and of every good gift. 
Upon His good pleasure its continuance de- 
pends, and it is always subject to his con- 
trol. 

Beings to whom God has given any de- 
gree of power, and understanding to direct 
them to the proper use of it, must be ac- 
countable to their Maker. But those who 
are intrusted with no power can have no 
account to make ; for all good conduct con- 
sists in the right use of power ; all bad 
conduct in the abuse of it. 

To call to account a being who never was 
intrusted with any degree of power, is an 
absurdity no less than it would be to call 
to account an inanimate being. We are 
sure, therefore, if we have any account to 
make to the Author of our being, that we 
must have some degree of power, which, 
as far as it is properly used, entitles us to 
his approbation ; and, when abused, renders 
us obnoxious to his displeasure. [590] 

It is not easy to say in what way we first 
get the notion or idea of power. It is 
neither an object of sense nor of conscious- 
ness. We see events, one succeeding an- 
other ; but we see not the power by which 
they are produced. We are conscious of 
the operations of our minds ; but power is 
not an operation of mind. If we had no 
notions but such as are furnished by the 
external senses, and by consciousness, it 
seems to be impossible that we should ever 
have any conception of power. Accord- 
ingly, Mr Hume, who has reasoned the 
most accurately upon this hypothesis, denies 
that we have any idea of power, and clearly 
refutes the account given by Mr Locke of 
the origin of this idea. 

But it is in vain to reason from a hypo- 
thesis against a fact, the truth of which 
every man may see by attending to his own 
thoughts. It is evident that all men, very 
early in life, not only have an idea of power, 
but a conviction that they have some de- 
gree of it in themselves ; for this conviction 
is necessarily implied in many operations 
of mind, which are familiar to every man, 
and without which no man can act the part 
of a reasonable being. 

First, It is implied in every act of voli- 
tion. " Volition, it is plain," says Mr 
Locke, " is an act of the mind, knowingly 



* Philosophers admitted that we are conscious of 

these ; does Reid admit this of external objects ? — H. 

[588-590] 



chap, v.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT TRUTHS. 447 



exerting that dominion which it takes itself 
to have over any part of the man, by em- 
ploying it in, or withholding it from any 
particular action." Every volition, there- 
fore, implies a conviction of power to do the 
action willed. A man may desire to make 
a visit to the moon, or to the planet Jupi- 
ter ; but nothing but insanity could make 
him will to do so. And, if even insanity 
produced this effect, it must be by making 
him think it to be in his power. 

Secondly, This- conviction is implied in 
all deliberation ; for no man in his wits de- 
liberates whether he shall do what he be- 
lieves not to be in his power. Thirdly, 
The same conviction is implied in every 
resolution or purpose formed in consequence 
of deliberation. A man may as well form 
a resolution to pull the moon out of her 
sphere, as to do the most insignificant action 
which he believes not to be in his power. 
The same thing may be said of every pro- 
mise or contract wherein a man plights his 
faith ; for he is not an honest man who 
promises what he does not believe he has 
power to perform. [591] 

As these operations imply a belief of 
some degree of power in ourselves ; so there 
are others equally common and familiar, 
which imply a like belief with regard to 
others. 

When we impute to a man any action or 
omission, as a ground of approbation or of 
blame, we must believe he had power to do 
otherwise. The same is implied in all 
advice, exhortation, command, and rebuke, 
and in every case in which we rely upon his 
fidelity in performing any engagement or 
executing any trust. 

It is not more evident that mankind have 
a conviction of the existence of a material 
world, than that they have the conviction 
of some degree of power in themselves and 
in others ; every one over his own actions, 
and the determinations of his will — a con- 
viction so early, so general, and so inter- 
woven with the whole of human conduct, 
that it must be the natural effect of our 
constitution, and intended by the Author of 
our being to guide our actions. 

It resembles our conviction of the ex- 
istence of a material world in this respect 
also, that even those who reject it in specu- 
lation, find themselves under a necessity of 
being governed by it in their practice ; and 
thus it will always happen when philosophy 
contradicts first principles, 

7. Another first principle is — That the 
natural faculties, by which we distinauish 
truth from error, are not fallacious. If any 
man should demand a proof of this, it is 
impossible to satisfy him. For, suppose it 
should be mathematically demonstrated, 
this would signify nothing in this case ; 
because, to judge of a demonstration, a man 
[591-593] 



must trust his faculties, and take for granted 
the very thing in question. [592] 

If a man's honesty were calle;! in ques- 
tion, it would be ridiculous to refer it to the 
man's own word, whether he be honest or 
not. The same absurdity there is in at- 
tempting to prove, by any kind of reasoning, 
probable or demonstrative, that our reason 
is not fallacious, since the very point in 
question is, whether reasoning may be 
trusted. 

If a sceptic should build his scepticism 
upon this foundation, that all our reasoning 
and judging powers are fallacious in their 
nature, or should resolve at least to with- 
hold assent until it be proved that they are 
not, it would be impossible by argument 
to beat him out of this stronghold ; and he 
must even be left to enjoy his scepticism. 

Des Cartes certainly made a false step in 
this matter, for having suggested this doubt 
among others — that whatever evidence he 
might have from his consciousness, his 
senses, his memory, or his reason, yet 
possibly some malignant being had given 
him those faculties on purpose to impose 
upon him ; and, therefore, that they are not 
to be trusted without a proper voucher. 
To remove this doubt, he endeavours to 
prove the being of a Deity who is no de- 
ceiver; whence he concludes, that the facul- 
ties he had given him are true and worthy 
to be trusted. 

It is strange that so acute a reasoner did 
not perceive that in this reasoning there is 
evidently a begging of the question. 

For, if our faculties be fallacious, why 
may they not deceive us in this reasoning as 
well as in others ? And, if they are not to 
be trusted in this instance without a voucher, 
why not in others ? [593] 

Every kind of reasoning for the veracity 
of our faculties, amounts to no more than 
taking their own testimony for their vera- 
city ; and this we must do implicitly, until 
God give us new faculties to sit in judg- 
ment upon the old ; and the reason why 
Des Cartes satisfied himself with so weak 
an argument for the truth of his faculties, 
most probably was, that he never seriously 
doubted of it. 

If any truth can be said to be prior to all 
others in the order of nature, this seems 
to have the best claim-; because, in every 
instance of assent, whether upon intuitive, 
demonstrative, or probable evidence, the 
truth of our faculties is taken for granted, 
and is, as it were, one of the premises on 
which our assent is grounded. * 

How then come we to be assured of this 



* There is a presumption in favour of the veracity 
of the primary data' of consciousness. This can only 
be rebutted by shewing tha~ these facts are contradic- 
tory. Scepticism attempts t&shew this on the prin- 
ciples which Dogmatism postulates.— H. 



448 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



fundamental truth on which all others rest ? 
Perhaps evidence, as in many other respects 
it resembles light, so in this also — that, as 
light, which is the discoverer of all visible 
objects, discovers itself at the same time, 
so evidence, which is the voucher for all 
truth, vouches for itself at the same time. 

This, however, is certain, that such is 
the constitution of the human mind, that 
evidence discerned by us, forces a corre- 
sponding degree of assent. And a man 
who perfectly understood a just syllogism, 
without believing that the conclusion follows 
from the premises, would be a greater mon- 
ster than a man born without hands or 
feet. 

We are born under a necessity of trust- 
ing to our reasoning and judging powers ; 
and a real belief of their being fallacious 
cannot be maintained for any considerable 
time by the greatest sceptic, because it is 
doing violence to our constitution. It is 
like a man's walking upon his hands, a feat 
which some men upon occasion can exhibit ; 
but no man ever made a long journey in 
this manner. Cease to admire bis dexte- 
rity, and he will, like other men, betake 
himself to his legs. [594 ] 

We may here take notice of a property 
of the principle under consideration, that 
seems to be common to it with many other 
first principles, and which can hardly be 
found in any principle that is built solely 
upon reasoning ; and that is, that in most 
men it produces its effect without ever being 
attended to, or made an object of thought. 
No man ever thinks of this principle, unless 
when he considers the grounds of scepticism ; 
yet it invariably governs his opinions. 
When a man in the common course of 
life gives credit to the testimony of his 
senses, his memory, or his reason, he does 
not put the question to himself, whether 
these faculties may deceive him ; yet the 
trust he reposes in them supposes an inward 
conviction, that, in that instance at least, 
they do not deceive him. 

It is another property of this and of many 
first principles, that they force assent in par- 
ticular instances, more powerfully than 
when they are turned into a general propo- 
sition. Many sceptics have denied every 
general principle of science, excepting per- 
haps the existence of our present thoughts ; 
yet these men reason, and refute, and prove, 
they assent and dissent in particular cases. 
They use reasoning to overturn all reason- 
ing, and judge that they ought to have no 
judgment, and see clearly that they are 
bhnd. Many have in general maintained 
that the senses are fallacious, yet there 
never was found a man so sceptical as not 
to trust his senses in particular instances 
when his safety required it ; and it may be 
observed of those who have professed scep- 



ticism, that their scepticism lies in generals, 
while in particulars they are no less dog- 
matical than others. 

8. Another first principle relating to ex- 
istence, is, That there is.life and intelligence 
in our ./ elk w -men with whom we converse. 

As soon as children are capable of askiug 
a question, or of answering a question, as 
soon as they shew the signs of love, of re- 
sentment, or of any other affection, they 
must be convinced that those with whom 
they have this intercourse are intelligent 
beings. [595] 

It is evident they are capable of such in- 
tercourse long before they can reason. 
Every one knows that there is a social in- 
tercourse between the nurse and the child 
before it is a year old. It can, at that age, 
understand many things that are said to it. 

It can by signs ask and refuse, threaten 
and supplicate. It clings to its nurse in 
danger, enters into her grief and joy, is hap- 
py in her soothing and caresses, and un- 
happy in her displeasure. That these 
things cannot be without a conviction in 
the child that the nurse is an intelligent 
being, I think must be granted. 

Now, I would ask how a child of a year 
old comes by this conviction ? Not by rea- 
soning surely, for children do not reason at 
that age. Nor is it by external senses, for 
life and intelligence are not objects of the 
external senses. 

By what means, or upon what occasions, 
Nature first gives this information to the 
infant mind, is not easy to determine. We 
are not capable of reflecting upon our own 
thoughts at that period of life ; and before 
we attain this capacity, we have quite for- 
got how or on what occasion we first had 
this belief ; we perceive it in those who are 
born blind, and in others who are born 
deaf; and therefore Nature has not con- 
nected it solely either with any object of 
sight, or with any object of hearing. When 
we grow up to the years of reason and re- 
flection, this belief remains. No man thinks 
of asking himself what reason he has to be- 
lieve that his neighbour is a living creature. 
He would be not a little surprised if another 
person should ask him so absurd a ques- 
tion ; and perhaps could not give any rea- 
son which would not equally prove a watch 
or a puppet to be a living creature. 

But, though you should satisfy him of the 
weakness of the reasons he gives for his be- 
lief, you cannot make him in the least 
doubtful. This belief stands upon another 
foundation than that of reasoning; and 
therefore, whether a man can give good 
reasons for it or not, it is not in his power 
to shake it off. [596] 

Setting aside this natural conviction, I 

believe the best reason we can give, to 

prove that other men are living and intelli- 

[594-596] 



chap, v.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT TRUTHS. 449 



gent, is, that their words and actions indi- 
cate like powers of understanding as we 
are conscious of in ourselves- The very 
same argument applied to the works of na- 
ture, leads us to conclude that there is an 
intelligent Author of nature, and appears 
equally strong and obvious in the last case 
as in the first ; so that it may be doubted 
whether men, by the mere exercise of rea- 
soning, might not as soon discover the ex- 
istence of a Deity, as that other men have 
life and intelligence. 

The knowledge of the last is absolutely 
necessary to our receiving any improve- 
ment by means of instruction and example ; 
and, without these means of improvement, 
there is no ground to think that we should 
ever be able to acquire the use of our rea- 
soning powers. This knowledge, therefore, 
must be antecedent to reasoning, and there- 
fore must be a first principle. 

It cannot be said that the judgments we 
form concerning life and intelligence in 
other beings are at first free from error. 
But the errors of children in this matter 
lie on the safe side ; they are prone to at- 
tribute intelligence to things inanimate. 
These errors are of small consequence, and 
are gradually corrected by experience and 
ripe judgment. But the belief of life and 
intelligence in other men, is absolutely ne- 
cessary for us before we are capable of 
reasoning ; and therefore the Author of 
our being hath given us this belief antece- 
dently to all reasoning. 

9. Another first principle I take to be, 
That certain features of the countenance, 
sounds of the voice, and gestures of the body, 
indicate certain thoughts and dispositions of 
mind. [597] 

That many operations of the mind have 
their natural signs in the countenance, voice, 
and gesture, I suppose every man will ad- 
mit. Omnis enim mo! us animi, says Cicero, 
suum quemdam habet a natura vultum, et 
v.ocem et gestum. The only question is, 
whether we understand the signification of 
those signs, by the constitution of our na- 
ture, by a kind of natural perception simi- 
lar to the perceptions of sense ; or whether 
we gradually learn the signification of such 
signs from experience, as we learn that 
smoke is a sign of fire, or that the freezing 
of water is a sign of cold ? I take the first 
to be the truth. 

It seems to me incredible, that the no- 
tions men have of the expression of features, 
voice, and gesture, are entirely the fruit of 
experience. Children, almost as soon as born, 
may be frighted, and thrown into fits by a 
threatening or angry tone of voice. I knew 
a man who could make an infant cry, by 
whistling a melancholy tune in the same 
or in the next room ; and again, by alter- 
ing his key, and the strain of his music, 
[597, 598] 



could make the child leap and dance for 

joy. 

It is not by experience surely that we 
learn the expression of music ; for its opera- 
tion is commonly strongest the first time we 
hear it: One air expresses mirth and festi- 
vity — so that, when we hear it, it is with 
difficulty we can forbear to dance ; another 
is sorrowful and solemn. One inspires with 
tenderness and love ; another with rage and 
fury. 

" Hear how Timotheus varied lays surprise, 
And bid alternate passions fall and rise ; 
While at each change, the son of Lvbian Jove 
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love. 
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, 
Now sighs steal. out, and tears begin to flow. 
Persians and Greeks, like turns of Nature, found, 
A iid the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound." 

It is not necessary that a man have studied 
either music or the passions, in order to his 
feeling these effects. The most ignorant 
and unimproved, to whom Nature has given 
a good ear, feel them as strongly as the 
most knowing. [598] 

The countenance and gesture have an 
expression no less strong and natural than 
the voice. The first time one sees a stern 
and fierce look, a contracted brow, and a 
menacing posture, he concludes that the 
person is inflamed with anger. Shall we 
say, that, previous to experience, the most 
hostile countenance has as agreeable an 
appearance as the most gentle and benign ? 
This surely would contradict all experience ; 
for we know that an angry countenance 
will fright a child in the cradle. Who has 
not observed that children, very early, are 
able to distinguish what is said to them in 
jest from what is said in earnest, by the 
tone of the voice, and the features of the 
face ? They judge by these natural signs, 
even when they seem to contradict the arti- 
ficial. 

If it were by experience that we learn 
the meaning of features, and sound, and 
gesture, it might be expected that we should 
recollect the time when we first learned 
those lessons, or, at least, some of such a 
multitude. 

Those who give attention to the opera- 
tions of children, can easily discover the 
time when they have their earliest notices 
from experience — such as that flame will 
burn, or that knives v/ill cut. But no 
man is able to recollect in himself, or to 
observe in others, the time when the expres- 
sion of the face, voice, and gesture, were 
learned. 

Nay, I apprehend that it is impossible 
that this should be learned from experi- 
ence. 

When we see the sign, and see the thing 
signified always conjoined with it, expe- 
rience may be the instructor, and teach us 
how that sign is to be interpreted. But 
2 G 



450 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



how shall experience instruct us when we 
see the sign only, when the thing signified 
is invisible ? Now, this is the case here : 
the thoughts and passions of the mind, as 
well as the mind itself, are invisible, and 
therefore their connection with any sensible 
sign cannot be first discovered by expe- 
perience ; there must be some earlier source 
of this knowledge. [599] 

Nature seems to have given to men a 
faculty or sense, by which this connection 
is perceived. And the operation of this 
sense is very analogous to that of the ex- 
ternal senses. 

When I grasp an ivory ball in my hand, 
I feel a certain sensation of touch. In the 
sensation there is nothing external, nothing 
corporeal. The sensation is neither round 
nor hard; it is an act of feeling of the 
mind, from which I cannot, by reasoning, 
infer the existence of any body. But, by 
the constitution of my nature, the sensation 
carries along with it the conception and be- 
lief of a round hard body really existing in 
my hand. 

In like manner, when I see the features 
of an expressive face, I see only figure and 
colour variously modified. But, by the 
constitution of my nature, the visible ob- 
ject brings along with it the conception 
and belief of a certain passion or sentiment 
in the mind of the person. 

In the former case, a sensation of touch 
is the sign, and the hardness and roundness 
of the body I grasp is signified by that sen- 
sation. In the latter case, the features of 
the person is the sign, and the passion or 
sentiment is signified by it. 

The power of natural signs, to signify 
the sentiments and passions of the mind, is 
seen in the signs of dumb persons, who can 
make themselves to be understood in a con- 
siderable degree, even by those who are 
wholly inexperienced in that language. 

It is seen in the traffic which has been fre- 
quently carried on between people that have 
no common acquired language. They can 
buy and sell, and ask and refuse, and shew a 
friendly or hostile disposition by natural 
signs. [600] 

It was seen still more in the actors 
among the ancients who performed the 
gesticulation upon the stage, while others 
recited the words. To such a pitch was 
this art carried, that we are told Cicero 
and Roscius used to contend whether the 
orator could express anything by words, 
which the actor could not express in dumb 
show by gesticulation ; and whether the 
same sentence or thought could not be act- 
ed in all the variety of ways in which the 
orator could express it in words. 

But the most surprising exhibition of 
this kind, was that of the pantomimes 
among the Romans, who acted plays, or 



I scenes of plays, without any recitation, and 
! yet could be perfectly understood. 

And here it deserves our notice, that, al- 
though it required much study and practice 
in the pantomimes to excel in their art, 
yet it required neither study nor practice in 
the spectators to understand them. It was 
a natural language, and therefore under- 
stood by all men, whether Romans, Greeks, 
or barbarians, by the learned and the un- 
learned. 

Lucian relates, that a king, whose domi- 
nions bordered upon the Euxine Sea, hap- 
pening to be at Rome in the reign of Nero, 
and having seen a pantomime act, begged 
him of Nero, that he might use him in his 
intercourse with all the nations in his 
neighbourhood ; for, said he, I am obliged 
to employ I don't know how many inter- 
preters, in order to keep a correspondence 
with neighbours who speak many languages, 
and do not understand mine ; but this fel- 
low will make them all understand him. 

For these reasons, I conceive, it must be 
granted, not only that there is a connection 
established by Nature between certain signs 
in the countenance, voice, and gesture, and 
the thoughts and passions of the mind ; but 
also, that, by our constitution, we under- 
stand the meaning of those signs, and from 
the sign conclude the existence of the thing 
signified. [601] 

10. Another first principle appears to 
me to be — That there is a certain regard 
due to human testimony in matters of fact, 
and even to human authority in matters of 
opinion. 

Before we are capable of reasoning about 
testimony or authority, there are many 
things which it concerns us to know, for 
which we can have no other evidence. The 
wise Author of nature hath planted in the 
human mind a propensity to rely upon this 
evidence before we can give a reason for 
doing so. This, indeed, puts our judgment 
almost entirely in the power of those who 
are about us in the first period of life ; but 
this is necessary both to our preservation 
and to our improvement. If children were 
so framed as to pay no regard to testimony 
or to authority, they must, in the literal 
sense, perish for lack of knowledge. It is 
not more necessary that they should be fed 
before they can feed themselves, than that 
they should be instructed in many things 
before they can discover them by their own 
judgment. 

But, when our faculties ripen, we find 
reason to check that propensity to yield to 
testimony and to authority, which was so 
necessary and so natural in the first period 
of life. We learn to reason about the re- 
gard due to them, and see it to be a childish 
weakness to lay more stress upon them than 
than reason justifies. Yet, I believe, to 
[599-601] 



chap, v.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONTINGENT TRUTHS. 451 



the end of life, most men are more apt to go 
into this extreme than into the contrary ; 
and the natural propensity still retains some 
force. 

The natural principles, by which our 
judgments and opinions are regulated before 
we come to the use of reason, seem to be no 
less necessary to such a being as man, than 
those natural instincts which the Author of 
nature hath given us to regulate our actions 
during that period. [602] 

11. There are many events depending 
upon the will of man, in which there is a 
self-evident probability, greater or less, ac- 
cording to circumstances. 

There may be in some individuals such a 
degree of frenzy and madness, that no 
man can say what they may or may not do. 
Such persons we find it necessary to put 
under restraint, that as far as possible they 
may be kept from doing harm to themselves 
or to others. They are not considered as 
reasonable creatures, or members of society. 
But, as to men who have a sound mind, we 
depend upon a certain degree of regularity 
in their conduct ; and could put a thousand 
different cases, wherein we could venture, 
ten to one, that they will act in such a way, 
and not in the contrary. 

If we had no confidence in our fellow-men 
that they will act such a part in such cir- 
cumstances, it would be impossible to live 
in society with them. For that which 
makes men capable of living in society, and 
uniting in a political body under government, 
is, that their actions will always be regu- 
lated, in a great measure, by the common 
principles of human nature. 

It may always be expected that they 
will regard their own interest and reputa- 
tion, and that of their families and friends ; 
that they will repel injuries, and have some 
sense of good offices; and that they will 
have some regard to truth and justice, so 
far at least as not to swerve from them 
without temptation. 

It is upon such principles as these, that 
all political reasoning is grounded. Such 
reasoning is never demonstrative ; but it 
may have a very great degree of probability, 
especially when applied to great bodies of 
men. [603] 

12. The last principle of contingent truths 
I mention is, That, in the phenomena of 
nature, what is to be, will probably be like 
to what has been in similar circumstances.* 

We must have this conviction as soon as 
we are capable of learning anything from 
experience ; for all experience is grounded 
upon a belief that the future will be like 
the past. Take away this principle, and 
the experience of an hundred years makes 



* Compare above, " Inquiry," c. vi. § 24. 8tewart's 
" Elements", i. p. 205. " Philosophical Essays," 
p. 74, sq.— H. 



[602-604] 



us no wiser with regard to what is to 
come. 

This is one of those principles which, 
when we grow up and observe the course of 
nature, we can confirm by reasoning. We 
perceive that Nature is governed by fixed 
laws, and that, if it were not so, there could 
be no such thing as prudence in human 
conduct ; there would be no fitness in any 
means to promote an end ; and what, on 
one occasion, promoted it, might as pro- 
bably, on another occasion, obstruct it. 

But the principle is necessary for us be- 
fore we are able to discover it by reasoning, 
and therefore is made a part of our consti- 
tution, and produces its effects before the 
use of reason. 

This principle remains in all its force 
when we come to the use of reason ; but 
we learn to be more cautious in the appli- 
cation of it. We observe more carefully 
the circumstances on which the past event 
depended, and learn to distinguish them 
from those which were accidentally con- 
joined with it. 

In order to this, a number of experi- 
ments, varied in their circumstances, is 
often necessary. Sometimes a single ex- 
periment is thought sufficient to establish a 
general conclusion. Thus, when it was 
once found, that, in a certain degree of cold, 
quicksilver became a hard and malleable 
metal, there was good reason to think that 
the same degree of cold will always produce 
this effect to the end of the world. [604] 

I need hardly mention, that the whole 
fabric of natural philosophy is built upon 
this principle, and, if it be taken away, 
must tumble down to the foundation. 

Therefore the great Newton lays it down 
as an axiom, or as one of his laws of philo- 
sophising, in these words, Effectuum natur- 
alium ejusdem generis easdem esse causas. 
This is what every man assents to, as soon 
as he understands it, and no man asks a 
reason for it. It has, therefore, the most 
genuine marks of a first principle. 

It is very remarkable, that, although all 
our expectation of what is to happen in the 
course of nature is derived from the belief 
of this principle, yet no man thinks of ask- 
ing what is the ground of this belief. 

Mr Hume, I think, was the first* who 
put this question; and he has shewn clearly 
and invincibly, that it is neither grounded 
upon reasoning, nor has that kind of intui- 
tive evidence which mathematical axioms 
have. It is not a necessary truth. 

He has endeavoured to account for it 
upon his own principles. It is not my 
business, at present, to examine the account 
he has given of this universal belief of man- 

* Hume was not the. first: but on the various 
opinions touching the ground of this expectancy, I 
cannot touch.— H. 

2 G 2 



>N THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



kind ; because, whether his account of it be 
just or not, (and I think it is not,) yet, as 
this belief is universal among mankind, and 
is not grounded upon any antecedent rea- 
soning, but upon the constitution of the 
mind itself, it must be acknowledged to be 
a first principle, in the sense in which I 
use that word. 

I do not at all affirm, that those I have 
mentioned are all the first principles from 
which we may reason concerning contingent 
truths. Such enumerations, even when 
made after much reflection, are seldom per- 
fect. [605] 



CHAPTER VI. 

FIRST PRINCIPLES OP NECESSARY TRUTHS. 

About most of the first principles of ne- 
cessary truths there has been no dispute, 
and therefore it is the less necessary to 
dwell upon them. It will be sufficient to 
divide them into different classes ; to men- 
tion some, by way of specimen, in each 
class ; and to make some remarks on those 
of which the truth has been called in ques- 
tion. 

They may, I think, most properly be 
divided according to the sciences to which 
they belong. 

1. There are some first principles that 
may be called grammatical . such as, That 
every adjective in a sentence must belong to 
some substantive expressed or understood ; 
That every complete sentence must have a 
verb. 

Those who have attended to the struc- 
ture of language, and formed distinct no- 
tions of the nature and use of the various 
parts of speech, perceive, without reasoning, 
that these, and many other such principles, 
are necessarily true. 

2. There are logical axioms : such as, 
That any contexture of words which does not 
make a proposition, is neither true nor false ; 
That' every proposition is either true or 

false ; That no proposition can be both true 
and false at the same time ; That reasoning 
in a circle proves nothing ; That whatever 
may be truly affirmed of a genus, may be 
truly affirmed of all the species, and all the 
individuals belonging to that genus. [606] 

3. Every one knows there axe mathematical 
axioms.* Mathematicians have, from the 
days of Euclid, very wisely laid down the 
axioms or first principles on which they 
reason. And the effect which this appears 
to have had upon the stability and happy 
progress of this science, gives no small en- 
couragement to attempt to lay the founda- 
tion of other sciences in a similar manner, 
as far as we are able. 



* See Stewart's " Elements," ii. p. 3S, sq.— H. 



Mr Hume hath discovered, as he appre- 
hends, a weak side, even in mathematical 
axioms ;• and thinks that it is not strictly 
true, for instance, that two right lines can 
cut one another in one point only. 

The principle he reasons from is, That 
every simple idea is a copy of a preceding 
impression ; and therefore in its precision 
and accuracy, can never go beyond its ori- 
ginal. From which he reasons in this man- 
ner : No man ever saw or felt a line so 
straight that it might not cut another, 
equally straight, in two or more points. 
Therefore, there can be no idea of such a 
line. 

The ideas that are most essential to geo- 
metry — such as those of equality, of a 
straight line, and of a square surface, are far, 
he says, from being distinct and deter- 
minate; and the definitions destroy the 
pretended demonstrations. Thus, mathe- 
matical demonstration is found to be a rope 
of sand. 

I agree with this acute author, that, if 
we could form no notion of points, lines, and 
surfaces, more accurate than those we see 
and handle, there could be no mathematical 
demonstration. " 

But every man that has understanding, 
by analysing, by abstracting, and compound- 
ing the rude materials exhibited by his 
senses, can fabricate, in his own mind, 
those elegant and accurate forms of mathe- 
matical lines, surfaces, and solids. [607] 

If a man finds himself incapable of form- 
ing a precise and determinate notion of the 
figure which mathematicians call a cube, 
he not only is no mathematician, but is in- 
capable of being one. But, if he has a pre- 
cise and determinate notion of that figure, 
he must perceive that it is terminated by six 
mathematical surfaces, perfectly square and 
perfectly equal. He must perceive that 
these surfaces are terminated by twelve 
mathematical lines, perfectly straight and 
perfectly equal, and that those lines are ter- 
minated by eight mathematical points. 

When a man is conscious of having these 
conceptions distinct and determinate, as 
every mathematician is, it is in vain to bring 
metaphysical arguments to convince him 
that they are not distinct. You may as well 
bring arguments to convince a man racked 
with pain that he feels no pain. 

Every theory that is inconsistent with our 
having accurate notions of mathematical 
lines, surfaces, and solids, must be false. 
Therefore it follows, that they are not copies 
of our impressions. 

The Medicean Venus is not a copy of the 
block of marble from which it was made. 
It is true, that the elegant statue was 
formed out of the rude block, and that, too, 
by a manual operation, which, in a literal 
sense, we may call abstraction. Mathe- 
T605-607] 



chap, vi.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF NECESSARY TRUTHS. 



453 



matical notions are formed in the under- 
standing by an abstraction of another kind, 
out of the rude perceptions of our senses. 

As the truths of natural philosophy are 
not necessary truths, but contingent, de- 
pending upon the will of the Maker of the 
world, the principles from which they are 
deduced must be of the same nature, and, 
therefore, belong not to this class. [608] 

4. I think there are axioms, even in 
matters of taste. Notwithstanding the 
variety found among men, in taste, there 
are, I apprehend, some common principles, 
even in matters of this kind. I never heard 
of any man who thought it a beauty in a 
human face to want a nose, or an eye, or to 
have the mouth on one side. How many 
ages have passed since the days of Homer ! 
Yet, in this long tract of ages, there never 
was found a man who took Thersites for a 
beauty. 

The fine arts are very properly called the 
arts of taste, because the principles of both 
are the same ; and, in the fine arts, we find 
no less agreement among those who practise 
them than among other artists. 

No work of taste can be either relished 
or understood by those who do not agree 
with the author in the principles of taste. 

Homer and Virgil, and Shakspeare and 
Milton, had the same taste ; and all men 
who have been acquainted with their writ- 
ings, and agree in the admiration of them, 
must have the same taste. 

The fundamental rules of poetry and 
music, and painting, and dramatic action and 
eloquence, have been always the same, and 
will be so to the end of the world. 

The variety we find among men in matters 
of taste, is easily accounted for, consistently 
with what we have advanced. 

There is a taste that is acquired, and a 
taste that is natural. This holds with re- 
spect both to the external sense of taste and 
the internal. Habit and fashion have a 
powerful influence upon both. 

Of tastes that are natural, there are some 
that may be called rational, others that are 
merely animal. 

Children are delighted with brilliant and 
gaudy colours, with romping and noisy 
mirth, with feats of agility, strength, or 
cunning ; and savages have much the same 
tas + e as children. [609] 

But there are tastes that are more intel- 
lectual. It is the dictate of our rational na- 
ture, that love and admiration are misplaced 
when there is no intrinsic worth in the object. 

In those operations of taste which are ra- 
tional, we judge of the real worth and ex- 
cellence of the object, and our love or 
admiration is guided by that judgment. In 
such operations there is judgment as well 
as feeling, and the feeling depends upon 
the judgment we form ot the object. 
[608-610] 



I do not maintain that taste, so far as it 
is acquired, or so far as it is merely animal, 
can be reduced to principles. But, as far 
as it is founded on judgment, it certainly may. 

The virtues, the graces, the muses, have 
a beauty that is intrinsic. It lies not in 
the feelings of the spectator, but in the 
real excellence of the object. If we do not 
perceive their beauty, it is owing to the de- 
fect or to the perversion of our faculties. 

And, as there is an original beauty in cer- 
tain moral and intellectual qualities, so 
there is a borrowed and derived beauty 
in the natural signs and expressions of 
such qualities. 

The features of the human face, the mo- 
dulations of the voice, and the proportions, 
attitudes, and gesture of the body, are all 
natural expressions of good or bad quali- 
ties of the person, and derive a beauty or 
a deformity from the qualities which they 
express. 

Works of art express some quality of 
the artist, and often derive an additional 
beauty from their utility or fitness for their 
end. 

Of such things there are some that 
ought to please, and others that ought to 
displease. If they do not, it is owing to 
some defect in the spectator. But what 
has real excellence will always please 
those who have a correct judgment and a 
sound heart. [610] 

The sum of what has been said upon 
this subject is, that, setting aside the 
tastes which men acquire by habit and 
fashion, there is a natural taste, which is 
partly animal, and partly rational. With 
regard to the first, all we can say is, 
that the Author of nature, for wise rea- 
sons, has formed us so as to receive plea- 
sure from the contemplation of certain 
objects, and disgust from others, before 
we are capable of perceiving any real ex- 
cellence in one or defect in the other. 
But that taste which we may call ration- 
al, is that part of our constitution by 
which we are made to receive pleasure 
from the contemplation of what we con- 
ceive to be excellent in its kind, the plea- 
sure being annexed to this judgment, and 
regulated by it. This taste may be true 
or false, according as it is founded on a 
true or false judgment. And, if it may be 
true or false, it must have first principles. 

5. There are also first principles in mo- 
rals. 

That an unjust action has more demerit 
than an ungenerous one : That a generous 
action has more merit than a merely just 
one : That no man ought to be blamed for 
what it was not in his power to hinder : That 
we ought not to do to others what we would 
think unjust or unfair to be done to us in 
like circumstances. These are moral axioms, 



454 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



and many others might be named which ap- 
pear to me to have no less evidence than 
those of .mathematics. 

Some perhaps may think that our de- 
terminations, either in matters of taste or 
in morals, ought not to be accounted ne- 
cessary truths : That they are grounded 
upon the constitution of that faculty which 
we call taste, and of that which we call 
the moral sense or conscience ; which fa- 
culties might have been so constituted as 
to have given determinations different, or 
even contrary to those they now give : 
That, as there is nothing sweet or bitter 
in itself, but according as it agrees or dis- 
agrees with the external sense called taste ; 
so there is nothing beautiful or ugly in it- 
self, but according as it agrees or dis- 
agrees with the internal sense, which we 
also call taste ; and nothing morally good 
or ill in itself, but according as it agrees 
or disagrees with our moral sense. [611] 

This indeed is a system, with regard to 
morals and taste, which hath been supported 
in modern times by great authorities. And 
if this system be true, the consequence 
must be, that there can be no principles, 
either of taste or of morals, that are neces- 
sary truths. For, according to this system, 
all our determinations, both with regard to 
matters of taste, and with regard to morals, 
are reduced to matters of fact — I mean to 
such as these, that by our constitution we 
have on such occasions certain agreeable 
feelings, and on other occasions certain dis- 
agreeable feelings. 

But I cannot help being of a contrary 
opinion, being persuaded that a man who 
determined that polite behaviour has great 
deformity, and that there is great beauty 
in rudeness and ill-breeding, would judge 
wrong, whatever his feelings were. 

In like manner, I cannot help thinking 
that a man who determined that there is 
more moral worth in cruelty, perfidy, and 
injustice, than in generosity, justice, pru- 
dence, and temperance, would judge wrong, 
whatever his constitution was. 

And, if it be true that there is judgment 
in our determinations of taste and of morals, 
it must be granted that what is true or 
false in morals, or in matters of taste, is 
necessarily so. For this reason, I have 
ranked the first principles of morals and of 
taste under the class of necessary truths. 

6. The last class of first principles I shall 
mention, we may call metaphysical. 

I shall particularly consider three of these, 
because they have been called in question 
by Mr Hume. [612] 

The first is, That the qualities which we 
perceive by our senses must have a subject, 
which we call body, and that the thoughts 
we are conscious of must have a subject, 
which we call mind. 



It is not more evident that two and two 
make four, than it is that figure cannot 
exist, unless there be something that is 
figured, nor motion without something that 
is moved. I not only perceive figure and 
motion, but I perceive them to be qualities. 
They have a necessary relation to some- 
thing in which they exist as their subject. 
The difficulty which some philosophers have 
found in admitting this, is entirely owing to 
the theory of ideas. A subject of the sen- 
sible qualities which we perceive by our 
senses, is not an idea either of sensation or 
of consciousness ; therefore say they, we 
have no such idea. Or, in the style of Mr 
Hume, from what impression is the idea of 
substance derived ? It is not a copy of any 
impression ; therefore there is no such idea. 

The distinction between sensible quali- 
ties, and the substance to which they belong, 
and between thought and the mind that 
thinks, is not the invention of philosophers ; 
it is found in the structure of all languages, 
and therefore must be common to all men 
who speak with understanding. And I 
believe no man, however sceptical he may 
be in speculation, can talk on the common 
affairs of life for half an hour, without say- 
ing things that imply his belief of the reality 
of these distinctions. 

Mr Locke acknowledges, " That we can- 
not conceive how simple ideas of sensible 
qualities should subsist alone ; and there- 
fore we suppose them to exist in, and to be 
supported by, some common subject." In 
his Essay, indeed, some of his expressions 
seem to leave it dubious whether this belief, 
that sensible qualities must have a subject, 
be a true judgment or a vulgar prejudice. 
[613] But in his first letter to the Bishop 
of Worcester, he removes this doubt, and 
quotes many passages of his Essay, to shew 
that he neither denied nor doubted of the 
existence of substances, both thinking and 
material ; and that he believed their ex- 
istence on the same ground the Bishop 
did — to wit, " on the repugnancy to our 
conceptions, that modes and accidents should 
subsist by themselves." He offers no proof 
of this repugnancy ; nor, I think, can any 
proof of it be given, because it is a first 
principle. 

It were to be wished that Mr Locke, who 
inquired so accurately and so laudably into 
the origin, certainty, and extent of human 
knowledge, had turned his attention more 
particularly to the origin of these two 
opinions which he firmly believed ; to wit, 
that sensible qualities must have a subject 
which we call body, and that thought must 
have a subject which we call mind. A due 
attention to these two opinions which go- 
vern the belief of all men, even of sceptics 
in the practice of life, would probably have 
led him to perceive, that sensation and 
f611-6l3] 



chap, vi.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF NECESSARY TRUTHS. 



455 



consciousness are not the only sources of 
human knowledge ; and that there are prin- 
ciples of belief in human nature, of which 
we can give no other account but that they 
necessarily result from the constitution of 
our faculties ; and that, if it were in our 
power to throw off their influence upon our 
practice and conduct, we could neither 
speak nor act like reasonable men. 

We cannot give a reason why we believe 
even our sensations to be real and not fal- 
lacious ; why we believe what we are con- 
scious of ; why we trust any of our natural 
faculties. We say, it must be so, it cannot 
be otherwise. This expresses only a strong 
belief, which is indeed the voice of nature, 
and which therefore in vain we attempt to 
resist. But if, in spite of nature, we resolve 
to go deeper, and not to trust our faculties, 
without a reason to shew that they cannot 
be fallacious, I am afraid, that, seeking to 
become wise, and to be as gods, we shall 
become foolish, and, being unsatisfied with 
the lot of humanity, we shall throw off com- 
mon sense. 

The second metaphysical principle I men- 
tion is — That ivhatever begins to exist, must 
have a cause which produced it.* [614] 

Philosophy is indebted to Mr Hume in 
this respect among others, that, by calling 
in question many of the first principles of 
human knowledge, he hath put speculative 
men upon inquii'ing more carefully than was 
done before into the nature of the evidence 
upon which they rest. Truth can never 
suffer by a fair inquiry ; it can bear to be 
seen naked and in the fullest light ; and the 
strictest examination will always turn out 
in the issue to its advantage. I believe Mr 
Hume was the first who ever called in 
question whether things that begin to exist 
must have a cause. 

With regard to this point, we must hold 
one of these three things, either that it is 
an opinion for which we have no evidence, 
and which men have foolishly taken up 
without ground ; or, secondly^ That it is 
capable of direct proof by argument ; or, 
thirdly, That it is self-evident, and needs no 
proof, but ought to be received as an axiom, 
which cannot, by reasonable men, be called 
in question. 

The first of these suppositions would put 
an end to all philosophy, to all religion, to 
all reasoning that would carry us beyond 
the objects of sense, and to all prudence in 
the conduct of life. 

As to the second supposition, that this 
principle may be proved by direct reason- 
ing, I am afraid we shall find the proof 
extremely difficult, if not altogether im- 
possible. 

I know only of three or four arguments 

* See below, " Essays on the Active Powers," p. 30, 
rq.— H. 

[614-616] 



that have been urged by philosophers, in the 
way of abstract reasoning, to prove that 
things which begin to exist must have a cause. 

One is offered by Mr Hobbes, another 
by Dr Samuel Clarke, another by Mr Locke. 
Mr Hume, in his " Treatise of Human 
Nature," has examined them all ;* and, in 
my opinion, has shewn that they take for 
granted the thing to be proved ; a kind of 
false reasoning, which men are very apt to 
fall into when they attempt to prove what 
is self-evident. [615] 

It has been thought, that, although thia 
principle does not admit of proof from 
abstract reasoning, it may be proved from 
experience, and may be justly drawn by 
induction, from instances that fall within 
our observation. 

I conceive this method of proof will leave 
us in great uncertainty, for these three 
reasons : 

1st, Because the proposition to be proved 
is not a contingent but a necessary proposi- 
tion. It is not that things which begin to 
exist commonly have a cause, or even that 
they always in fact have a cause ; but that 
they must have a cause, and cannot begin 
to exist without a cause. 

Propositions of this kind, from their 
nature, are incapable of proof by induction. 
Experience informs us only of what is or 
has been, not of what must be ; and the 
conclusion must be of the same nature with 
the premises. -f- 

For this reason, no mathematical propo- 
sition can be proved by induction. Though 
it should be found by experience in a thou- 
sand cases, that the area of a plane triangle 
is equal to the rectangle under the altitude 
and half the base, this would not prove that 
it must be so in all cases, and cannot be 
otherwise ; which is what the mathematician 
affirms. £ 

In like manner, though we had the most 
ample experimental proof that things which 
have begun to exist had a cause, this would 
not prove that they must have a cause. 
Experience may shew us what is the esta- 
blished course of nature, but can never shew 
what connections of things are in their 
nature necessary. 

Idly, General maxims, grounded on ex- 
perience, have only a degree of probability 
proportioned to the extent of our experience, 
and ought always to be understood so as to 
leave room for exceptions, if future expe- 
rience shall discover any such. [616] 

The law of gravitation has as full a proof 
from experience and induction as any prin- 
ciple can be supposed to have. Yet, if any 
philosopher should, by clear experiment, 

* Vol. j. p. 144-146.— H. 

t See below, p. 627 ; and " Active Powers," p. 31, 
and alove, p. 323, a, note *.— H. 
i So Aristotle.— H. 



456 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay vi. 



shew that there is a kind of matter in some 
bodies which does not gravitate, the law 
of gravitation ought to be limited by that 
exception. 

Now, it is evident that men have never 
considered the principle of the necessity of 
causes, as a truth of this kind which may 
admit of limitation or exception ; and there- 
fore it has not been received upon this kind 
of evidence. 

3dly, I do not see that experience could 
satisfy us that every change in nature act- 
ually has a cause. 

In the far greatest part of the changes in 
nature that fall within our observation, the 
causes are unknown ; and, therefore, from 
experience, we cannot know whether they 
have causes or not. 

Causation is not an object of sense. The 
enly experience we can have of it, is in the 
consciousness we have of exerting some 
power in ordering our thoughts and actions. 
But this experience is surely too narrow a 
foundation for a general conclusion, that 
all things that have had or shall have a be- 
ginning, must have a cause. 

For these reasons, this principle cannot 
be drawn from experiance, any more than 
from abstract reasoning. 

The third supposition is — That it is to be 
admitted as a first or self-evident principle. 
Two reasons may be urged for this. 

1. The universal consent of mankind, not 
of philosophers only, but of the rude and un- 
learned vulgar. 

Mr Hume, as far as I know, was the first 
that ever expressed any doubt of this prin- 
ciple.* And when we consider that he has re- 
jected every principle of human knowledge, 
excepting that of consciousness, and has not 
even spared the axioms of mathematics, 
his authority is of small weight. [617] 

Indeed, with regard to first principles, 
there is no reason why the opinion of a 
philosopher should have more authority 
than that of another man of common sense, 
who has been accustomed to judge in such 
cases. The illiterate vulgar are competent 
judges ; and the philosopher has no preroga- 
tive in matters of this kind ; but he is more 
liable than they to be misled by a favourite 
system, especially if it is his own. 

Setting aside the authority of Mr Hume, 
what has philosophy been employed in 
since men first began to philosophise, but 
in the investigation of the causes of things ? 
This it has always professed, when we trace 
it to its cradle. It never entered into any 
man's thought, before the philosopher we 
have mentioned, to put the previous ques- 
tion, whether things have a cause or not ? 
Had it been thought possible that they 
might not, it may be presumed that, in the 

* Hume was not the first.— H. 



variety of absurd and contradictory causes 
assigned, some one would have had recourse 
to this hypothesis. 

They could conceive the world to arise 
from an egg, from a struggle between love 
and strife, between moisture and drought, 
between heat and cold ; but they never sup- 
posed that it had no cause. We know not 
any atheistic sect that ever had recourse 
to this topic, though by it, they might have 
evaded every argument that could be 
brought against them, and answered all 
objections to their system. 

But rather than adopt such an absurdity, 
they contrived some imaginary cause — such 
as chance, a concourse of atoms, or neces- 
sity — as the cause of the universe. [618] 

The accounts which philosophers have 
given of particular pheenomena, as well as 
of the universe in general, proceed upon 
the same principle. That every phaeno- 
menon must have a cause, was always taken 
for granted. Nil turpius physico, says 
Cicero, quam fieri sine causa quicquam 
dicere. Though an Academic, he was dog- 
matical in this. And Plato, the father of 
the Academy, was no less so. " Dem 

ya.g ottviiotrov x a i'S otWiou yititriv i%uv : it IS impos- 
sible that anything should have its origin 
without a cause." — Tim^us. 

I believe Mr Hume was the first who 
ever held the contrary.* This, indeed, he 
avows, and assumes the honour of the dis- 
covery. " It is," says he, " a maxim in 
philosophy, that whatever begins to exist, 
must have a cause of existence. This is 
commonly taken for granted in all reason- 
ings, without any proof given or demanded. 
It is supposed to be founded on intuition, 
and to be one of those maxims which, 
though they may be denied with the lips, 
it is impossible for men in their hearts 
really to doubt of. But, if we examine 
this maxim by the idea of knowledge above 
explained, we shall discover in it no mark 
of such intuitive certainty." The meaning 
of this seems to be, that it did not suit with 
his theory of intuitive certainty, and, there- 
fore, he excludes it from that privilege. 

The vulgar adhere to this maxim as 
firmly and universally as the philosophers. 
Their superstitions have the same origin- 
as the systems of philosophers — to wit, a 
desire to know the causes of things. Felix 
qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, is the 
universal sense of men ; but to say that 
anything can happen without a cause, shocks 
the common sense of a savage. 

This universal belief of mankind is easily 
accounted for, if we allow that the neces- 
sity of a cause of every event is obvious to 
the rational powers of a man. But it is 
impossible to account for it otherwise. It 



* See last note.— H. 



[617, G18] 



ohap vi.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF NECESSARY TRUTHS. 



457 



cannot be ascribed to education, to systems 
of philosophy, or to priestcraft. One 
would think that a philosopher who takes 
it to be a general delusion or prejudice, 
would endeavour to shew from what causes 
in human nature such a general error may 
take its rise. But I forget that Mr Hume 
might answer upon his own principles, that 
since things may happen without a cause — 
this error and delusion of men may be uni- 
versal without any cause. [619] 

2. A second reason why I conceive this 
to be a first principle, is, That mankind not 
only assent to it in speculation, but that the 
practice of life is grounded upon it in the 
most important matters, even in cases where 
experience leaves us doubtful ; and it is 
impossible to act with common prudence if 
we set it aside. 

In great families, there are so many bad 
things done by a certain personage, called 
Nobody, that it is proverbial that there is 
a Nobody about every house who does a 
great deal of mischief ; and even where 
there is the exactest inspection and govern- 
ment, many events will happen of which no 
other author can be found ; so that, if we 
trust merely to experience in this matter, No- 
body will be found to be a very active person, 
and to have no inconsiderable share in the 
management of affairs. But whatever coun- 
tenance this system may have from experi- 
ence, it is too shocking to common sense to 
impose upon the most ignorant. A child 
knows that, when his top, or any of his play- 
things, are taken away, it must be done by 
somebody. Perhaps it would not be diffi- 
cult to persuade him that it was done by 
some invisible being, but that.it should be 
done by nobody he cannot believe. 

Suppose a man's house to be broke open, 
his money and jewels taken away. Such 
things have happened times innumerable 
without any apparent cause ; and were he 
only to reason from experience in such a 
case, how must he behave ? He must put 
in one scale the instances wherein a cause 
was found of such an event, and in the other 
scale the instances where no cause was 
found, and the preponderant scale must 
determine whether it be most probable that 
there was a cause of this event, or that 
there was none. Would any man of com- 
mon understanding have recourse to such 
an expedient todirect his judgment? [620] 

Suppose a man to be found dead on the 
highway, his skull fractured, his body 
pierced with deadly wounds, his watch and 
money carried off. The coroner's jury sits 
upon the body ; and the question is put, 
What was the cause of this man's death ? — 
was it accident, or felo de se, or murder by 
persons unknown ? Let us suppose an 
adept in Mr Hume's philosophy to make 
one of the jury, and that he insists upon the 
[619-621] 



previous question, whether there was any 
cause of the event, and whether it happened 
without a cause. 

Surely, upon Mr Hume's principles, a 
great deal might be said upon this point ; 
and, if the matter is to be determined by 
past experience, it is dubious on which side 
the weight of argument might stand. But 
we may venture to say, that, if Mr Hume 
had been of such a jury, he would have laid 
aside his philosophical principles, and acted 
according to the dictates of common pru- 
dence. 

Many passages might be produced, even 
in Mr Hume's philosophical writings, in 
which he, unawares, betrays the same in- 
ward conviction of the necessity of causes 
which is common to other men. I shall 
mention only one, in the " Treatise of Hu- 
man Nature," and in that part of it where 
he combats this very principle : — " As to 
those impressions," says he, " which arise 
from the senses, their ultimate cause is, in 
my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by hu- 
man reason ; and it will always be impos- 
sible to decide with certainty whether they 
arise immediately from the object, or are 
produced by the creative power of the mind, 
or are derived from the Author of our 
being." 

Among these alternatives, he never 
thought of their not arising from any 
cause.* [621] 

The arguments which Mr Hume offers to 
prove that this is not a self-evident prin- 
ciple, are three. First, That all certainty 
arises from a comparison of ideas, and a 
discovery of their unalterable relations, 
none of which relations imply this proposi- 
tion, That whatever has a beginning must 
have a cause of existence. This theory of 
certainty has been examined before. 

The second argument is, That whatever 
we can conceive is possible. This has like- 
wise been examined. 

The thirda.rgiwient is, That what we call 
a cause, is only something antecedent to, 
and always conjoined with, the effect. This 
is also one of Mr Hume's peculiar doctrines, 
which we may have occasion to consider 
afterwards. It is sufficient here to observe, 
that we may learn from it that night is the 
cause of day, and day the cause of night : 
for no two things have more constantly 
followed each other since the beginning of 
the world. 

The [third and] lad metaphysical prin- 
ciple I mention, which is opposed by the 
same author, is, That design and intelli- 
gence in the cause may be inferred, with 
certainty, from marks or signs of it in the 
effect. 



* See above, p. 444, note *. It is the triumph of 
scepticism to shew that speculation and practice are 
irreconcilable. — H. 



458 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



Intelligence, design, and skill, are not 
objects of the external senses, nor can we 
be conscious of them in any person but our- 
selves. Even in ourselves, we cannot, with 
propriety, be said to be corscious of the 
natural or acquired talents we possess. We 
are conscious only of the operations of mind 
in which they are exerted. Indeed, a man 
comes to know his own mental abilities, 
just as he knows another man's, by the 
effects they produce, when there is occasion 
to put them to exercise. 

A man's wisdom is known to us only by 
the signs of it in his conduct ; his eloquence 
by the signs of it in his speech. In the same 
manner, we judge of his virtue, of his forti- 
tude, and of all his talents and virtues. [622] 

Yet it is to be observed, that we judge of 
men's talents with as little doubt or hesita- 
tion as we judge of the immediate objects 
of sense. 

One person, we are sure, is a perfect 
idiot ; another, who feigns idiocy to screen 
himself from punishment, is found, upon 
trial, to have the understanding of a man, 
and to be accountable for his conduct. We 
perceive one man to be open, another cun- 
ning; one to be ignorant, another very 
knowing ; one to be slow of understanding, 
another quick. Every man forms such 
judgments of those he converses with ; and 
the common affairs of life depend upon such 
judgments. We can as little avoid them as 
we can avoid seeing what is before our eyes. 

From this it appears, that it is no less a 
part of the human constitution, to judge of 
men's characters, and of their intellectual 
powers, from the signs of them in their 
actions and discourse, than to judge of cor- 
poreal objects by our senses ; that such 
judgments are common to the whole human 
race that are endowed with understanding ; 
and that they are absolutely necessary in 
the conduct of life. 

Now, every judgment of this kind we 
form, is only a particular application of the 
general principle, that intelligence, wisdom, 
and other mental qualities in the cause, 
may be inferred from their marks or signs 
in the effect. 

The actions and discourses of men are 
effects, of which the actors and speakers 
are the causes. The effects are perceived 
by our senses ; but the causes are behind 
the scene. We only conclude their exist- 
ence and their degrees from our observa- 
tion of the effects. 

From wise conduct, we infer wisdom in 
the cause ; from brave actions, we infer 
courage ; and so in other cases. [623] 

This inference is made with perfect secu- 
rity by all men. We cannot avoid it ; it 
is necessary in the ordinary conduct of 
life ; it has therefore the strongest marks of 
being a first principle. 



Perhaps some may think that this prin- 
ciple may be learned either by reasoning or 
by experience, and therefore that there is 
no ground to think it a first principle. 

If it can be shewn to be got by reasoning, 
by all, or the greater part of those who are 
governed by it, I shall very readily ac- 
knowledge that it ought not to be esteemed 
a first principle. But I apprehend the con- 
trary appears from very convincing argu- 
ments. 

First, The principle is too universal to 
be the effect of reasoning. It is common 
to philosophers and to the vulgar ; to the 
learned and to the most illiterate ; to the 
civilized and to the savage. And of those 
who are governed by it, not one in ten 
thousand can give a reason for it. 

Secondly, We find philosophers, ancient 
and modern, who can reason excellently in 
subjects that admit of reasoning, when they 
have occasion to defend this principle, not 
offering reasons for it, or any medium of 
proof, but appealing to the common sense 
of mankind ; mentioning particular instan- 
ces, to make the absurdity of the contrary 
opinion more apparent, and sometimes 
using the weapons of wit and ridicule, which 
are very proper weapons for refuting ab- 
surdities, but altogether improper in points 
that are to be determined by reasoning. 

To confirm this observation, I shall quote 
two authors, an ancient and a modern, who 
have more expressly undertaken the defence 
of this principle than any others I remem- 
ber to have met with, and whose good 
sense and ability to reason, where reasoning 
is proper, will not be doubted. [624] 

The first is Cicero, whose words, {lib. 1. 
cap. 13. De Divinalione,) may be thus 
translated. 

" Can anything done by chance have all 
the marks of design ? Four dice may by 
chance turn up four aces ; but do you think 
that four hundred dice, thrown by chance, 
will turn up four hundred aces ? Colours 
thrown upon canvas without design may 
have some similitude to a human face ; but 
do you think they might make as beautiful 
a picture as that of the Coan Venus ? A 
hog turning up the ground with his nose 
may make something of the form of the let- 
ter A ; but do you think that a hog might 
describe on the ground the Andromache of 
Ennius ? Carneades imagined that, in the 
stone quarries at Chios, he found, in a stone 
that was split, a representation of the head 
of a little Pan, or sylvan deity. I believe he 
might find a figure not unlike ; but surely not 
such a one as you would say had been formed 
by an excellent sculptor like Scopas. For 
so, verily, the case is, that chance never 
perfectly imitates design." Thus Cicero.* 

* See also Cicero " Dc Natura Dcorum" *L ii. c. 
[622-624] 



chap. vi.J FIRST PRINCIPLES OF NECESSARY TRUTHS. 



459 



Now, in all this discourse, I see very 
good sense, and what is apt to convince 
every unprejudiced mind ; but I see not in 
the whole a single step of reasoning. It is 
barely an appeal to every man's common 
sense. 

* Let us next see how the same point is 
handled by the excellent Archbishop Tillot- 
son. (1st Sermon, vol. i.) 

"For I appeal to any man of reason, 
whether anything can be more unreasonable 
than obstinately to impute an effect to chance 
which carries in the face of it all the argu- 
ments and characters of design ? Was ever 
any considerable work, in which there was 
required a great variety of parts, and an 
orderly and regular adjustment of these 
parts, done by chance ? Will chance fit 
means to ends, and that in ten thousand 
instances, and not fail in any one ? [625] 
How often might a man, after he had j umbled 
a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon 
the ground before they would fall into an 
exact poem, yea, or so much as make a 
good discourse in prose ? And may not a 
little book be as easily made as this great 
volume of the world ? How long might a 
man sprinkle colours upon canvass with a 
careless hand, before they would make the 
exact picture of a man ? And is a man 
easier made by chance than his picture ? 
How long might twenty thousand blind men, 
which should be sent out from the remote 
parts of England, wander up and down be- 
fore they would all meet upon Salisbury 
plains, andfall into rank and file in the exact 
order of an army ? And yet this is much 
more easy to be imagined than how the 
innumerable blind parts of matter should 
rendezvous themselves into a word. A man 
that sees Henry VI I. 's chapel at West- 
minster might, with as good reason, main- 
tain, (yea, and much better, considering the 
vast difference between that little structure 
and the huge fabric of the world,) that it 
was never contrived or built by any man, 
but that the stones did by chance grow into 
those curious figures into which we see them 
to have been cut and graven ; and that, upon 
a time, (as tales usually begin,) the mate- 
rials of that building — the stone, mortar, 
timber, iron, lead, and glass — happily met 
together, and very fortunately ranged them- 
selves into that delicate order in which we 
see them now, so close compacted that it 
must be a very great chance that parts them 
again. What would the world think of a 
man that should advance such an opinion 
as this, and write a book for it ? If they 
would do him right, they ought to look upon 
him as mad. But yet he might maintain 
this opinion with a little more reason than 
any man can have to say that the world was 
made by chance, or that the first men grew 
out of the earth, as plants do now ; for, can 
[625-627] 



anything be more ridiculous and against all 
reason, than to ascribe the production of 
men to the first fruitfulness of the earth, 
without so much as one instance or experi- 
ment in any age or history to countenance 
so monstrous a supposition ? The thing is 
at first sight so gross and palpable, that no 
discourse about it can make it more appa- 
rent. A.nd yet these shameful beggars of 
principles, who give this precarious account 
of the original of things, assume to them- 
selves to be the men of reason, the great 
wits of the world, the only cautious and wary 
persons, who hate to be imposed upon, that 
must have convincing evidence for every- 
thing, and can admit nothing without a clear 
demonstration for it. [626] 

In this passage, the excellent author takes 
what I conceive to be the proper method of 
refuting an absurdity, by exposing it in dif- 
ferent lights, in which every man of common 
understanding conceives it to be ridiculous. 
And, although there is much good sense, as 
well as wit, in the passage I have quoted, I 
cannot find one medium of proof in the 
whole. 

I have met with one or two respectable 
authors who draw an ax*gument from the 
doctrine of chances, to shew how impro- 
bable it is that a regular arrangement of 
parts should be the effect of chance, or that 
it should not be the effect of design. 

I do not object to this reasoning ; but I 
would observe that the doctrine of chances 
is a branch of mathematics little more than 
an hundred years old. But the conclusion 
drawn from it has been held by all men from 
the beginning of the world. It cannot, 
therefore, be thought that men have been 
led to this conclusion by that reasoning. 
Indeed, it may be doubted whether the first 
principle upon which all the mathematical 
reasoning about chances is grounded, is 
more self-evident than this conclusion drawn 
from it, or whether it is not a particular 
instance of that general conclusion. 

We are next to consider whether we may 
not learn this truth from experience, That 
effects which have all the marks and tokens 
of design, must proceed from a designing 
cause. [627] 

I apprehend that we cannot learn this 
truth from experience for two reasons. 

First, Because it is a necessary truth, 
not a contingent one. It agrees with the 
experience of mankind since the beginning 
of the world, that the area of a triangle is 
equal to half the rectangle under its base 
and perpendicular. It agrees no less with 
experience, that the sun rises in the east 
and sets in the west. So far as experience 
goes, these truths are upon an equal footing. 
But every man perceives this distinction 
between them — that the first is a necessary 
truth, and that it is impossible it should not 



460 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



be true ; but the last is not necessary, but 
contingent, depending upon the will of Him 
who made the world. As we cannot learn 
from experience that twice three must ne- 
cessarily make six, so neither can we learn 
from experience that certain effects must 
proceed from a designing and intelligent 
cause. Experience informs us only of what 
has been, but never of what must be.* 

Secondly, It may be observed, that ex- 
perience can shew a connection between a 
sign and the thing signified by it, in those 
cases only where both the sign and thing 
signified are perceived and have always 
been perceived in conjunction. But, if there 
be any case where the sign only is per- 
ceived, experience can never shew its con- 
nection with the thing signified. Thus, for 
example, thought is a sign of a thinking 
principle or mind. But how do we know 
that thought cannot be without a mind ? If 
any man should say that he knows this by 
experience, he deceives himself. It is im- 
possible he can have any experience of this ; 
because, though we have an immediate 
knowledge of the existence of thought in 
ourselves by consciousness, yet we have no 
immediate knowledge of a mind. The mind 
is not an immediate object either of sense 
or of consciousness. We may, therefore, 
justly conclude, that the necessary con- 
nection between thought and a mind, or 
thinking being, is not learned from expe- 
rience. [628] 

The same reasoning may be applied to 
the connection between a work excellently 
fitted for some purpose, and design in the 
author or cause of that work. One of these 
— to wit, the work — may be an immediate 
object of perception. But the design and 
purpose of the author cannot be an imme- 
diate object of perception ; and, therefore, 
experience can never inform us of any con- 
nection between the one and the other, far 
less of a necessary connection. 

Thus, I think, it appears, that the prin- 
ciple we have been considering — to wit, 
that from certain signs or indications in the 
effect, we may infer that there must have 
been intelligence, wisdom, or other intel- 
lectual or moral qualities in the cause, is a 
principle which we get, neither by reason- 
ing nor by experience ; and, therefore, if it 
be a true principle, it must be a first prin- 
ciple. There is in the human understand- 
ing a light, by which we see immediately 
the evidence of it, when there is occasion 
to apply it. 

Of how great importance this principle 
is in common life, we have already observed. 
And I need hardly mention its importance 
in natural theology. 

The clear marks and signatures of wis- 

* See abovep. t515; and " Active Powero,"p. 31.— H. 



dom, power, and goodness, in the consti- 
tution and government of the world, is, of 
all arguments that have been advanced for 
the being and providence of the Deity, that 
which in all ages has made the strongest 
impression upon candid and thinking minds ; 
an argument, which has this peculiar ad- 
vantage, that it gathers strength as human 
knowledge advances, and is more convincing 
at present than it was some centuries ago. 

King Alphonsus might say, that he could 
contrive a better planetary system than that 
which astronomers held in his day.* That 
system was not the work of God, but the 
fiction of men. [629] 

But since the true system of the sun, 
moon, and planets, has been discovered, no 
man, however atheistically disposed, has 
pretended to shew how a better could be 
contrived. 

When we attend to the marks of good 
contrivance which appear in the works of 
God, every discovery we make in the con- 
stitution of the material or intellectual 
system becomes a hymn of praise to the 
great Creator and Governor of the world. 
And a man who is possessed of the genuine 
spirit of philosophy will think it impiety to 
contaminate the divine workmanship, by 
mixing it with those fictions of human fancy, 
called theories and hypotheses, which will 
always bear the signatures of human folly, 
no less than the other does of divine wis- 
dom. 

I know of no person who ever called in 
question the principle now under our consi- 
deration, when it is applied to the actions 
and discourses of men. For this would be to 
deny that we have any means of discerning 
a wise man from an idiot, or a man that is 
illiterate in the highest degree from a man 
of knowledge and learning, which no man 
has the effrontery to deny. 

But, in all ages, those who have been 
unfriendly to the principles of religion, have 
made attempts to weaken the force of the 
argument for the existence and perfec- 
tions of the Deity, which is founded on this 
principle. That argument has got the name 
of the argument from final causes ; and as 
the meaning of this name is well understood, 
we shall use it. 

The argument from final causes, when re- 
duced to a syllogism, has these two premises : 
— First, That design and intelligence in the 
cause, may, with certainty, be inferred from 
marks or signs of it in the effect. This is 
the principle we have been considering, and 



* Alphonso X. of Castile. He flourished in the 
thirteenth century— a great mathematician and as- 
tronomer. To him we owe the Alphonsine Tables. 
His saying was not so pious and philosophical as Reid 
states ; but that, " Had he been present with God 
at the creation, he could have supplied some useful 
hmrs towards the better ordering of the universe." 



U. 



[628, 629] 



chap, vi.] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF NECESSARY TRUTHS. 



451 



we may call it the maj w proposition of the 
argument. The seeing which we call the 
minor proposition, is, That there are in fact 
the clearest marks of design and wisdom in 
ihe works of nature ; and the conclusion is, 
That the works of nature are the effects 
of a wise and intelligent Cause. One must 
either assent to the conclusion, or deny one 
or other of the premises. [630] 

Those among the ancients who denied a 
God or a Providence, seem to me to have 
yielded the major proposition, and to have 
denied the minor ; conceiving that there 
are not in the constitution of things such 
marks of wise contrivance as are sufficient 
to put the conclusion beyond doubt. This, 
I think, we may learn, from the reasoning 
of Cotta the academic, in the third book of 
Cicero, of the Nature of the Gods. 

The gradual advancement made in the 
knowledge of nature, hath put this opinion 
quite out of countenance. 

When the structure of the human body 
was much less known than it is now, the 
famous Galen saw such evident marks of 
wise contrivance in it, that, though he had 
been educated an Epicurean, he renounced 
that system, and wrote his book of the use 
of the parts of the human body, on purpose 
to convince others of what appeared so clear 
"to himself, that it was impossible that such 
admirable contrivance should be the effect 
of chance. 

Those, therefore, of later times, who are 
dissatisfied with this argument from final 
causes, have quitted the stronghold of the 
ancient atheists, which had become un- 
tenable, and have chosen rather to make a 
defence against the major proposition. 

Des Cartes seems to have led the way in 
this, though he was no atheist. But, having 
invented some new arguments for the being 
of God, he was, perhaps, led to disparage 
those that had been used before, that he 
might bring more credit to his own. Or 
perhaps he was offended with the Peripa- 
tetics, because they often mixed final causes 
with physical, in order to account for the 
phsenomena of nature. [631 ] 

He maintained, therefore, that physical 
causes only should be assigned for phaeno- 
mena ; that the philosopher has nothing to 
do with final causes ; and that it is pre- 
sumption in us to pretend to determine for 
what end any work of nature is framed. 
Some of those who were great admirers of 
Des Cartes, and folio wed him in many 
points, differed from him in this, particu- 
larly Dr Henry More and the pious Arch- 
bishop Fenelon : but others, after the ex- 
ample of Des Cartes, have shewn a contempt 
of all reasoning from final causes. Among 
these, I think, we may reckon Maupertuis 
and Buffon. But the most direct attack 
has been made upon this principle by Mr 
[630-632] 



Hume, who puts an argument in the mouth 
of an Epicurean, on which he seems to lay 
great stress. 

The argument is, That the universe is a 
singular effect, and, therefore, we can draw 
no conclusion from it, whether it may have 
been made by wisdom or not. * 

If I understand the force of this argu- 
ment, it amounts to this, That, if we had 
been accustomed to see worlds produced, 
some by wisdom and others without it, and 
had observed that such a world as this 
which we inhabit was always the effect of 
wisdom, we might then, from past experi- 
ence, conclude that this world was made 
by wisdom; but, having no such experi- 
ence, we have no means of forming any 
conclusion about it. 

That this is the strength of the argument 
appears, because, if the marks of wisdom 
seen in one world be no evidence of wisdom, 
the like marks seen in ten thousand will 
give as little evidence, unless, in time past, 
we perceived wisdom itself conjoined with 
the tokens of it ; and, from their perceived 
conjunction in time past, conclude that, al- 
though, in the present world, we see only 
one of the two, the other must accompany 
it. [632] 

W hence it appears that this reasoning of 
Mr Hume is built on the supposition that 
our inferring design from the strongest 
marks of it, is entirely owing to our past 
experience of having always found these 
two things conjoined. But I hope I have 
made it evident that this is not the case. 
And, indeed, it is evident that, according 
to this reasoning, we can have no evidence 
of mind or design in any of our fellow- 
men. 

How do I know that any man of my ac- 
quaintance has understanding ? I never 
saw his understanding. I see only cer- 
tain effects, which my judgment leads 
me to conclude to be marks and tokens 
of it. 

But, says the sceptical philosopher, you 
can conclude nothing from these tOKens ; un- 
less past experience has informed you that 
such tokens are always joined with under- 
standing. Alas ! sir, it is impossible I can 
ever have this experience. The understand- 
ing of another man is no immediate object 
of sight, or of any other faculty which God 
hath given me ; and unless I can conclude 
its existence from tokens that are visible, I 
have no evidence that there is understand- 
ing in any man. 

It seems, then, that the man who main- 
tains that there is no force in the argument 
from final causes, must, if he will be con- 
sistent, see no evidence of the existence of 
any intelligent being but himself. 

* See Stewart's " Elements," ii. p. 579.— H. 



462 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OPINIONS, ANCIENT AND MODERN, ABOUT 
FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

I know no writer who has treated ex- 
pressly of first principles before Aristotle ; 
but it is probable that, in the ancient Py- 
thagorean school, from which both Plato 
and Aristotle borrowed much, this subject 
had not been left untouched. [633] 

Before the time of Aristotle, considerable 
progress had been made in the mathema- 
tical sciences, particularly in geometry. 

The discovery of the forty-seventh pro- 
position of the first book of Euclid, and of 
the five regular solids, is, by antiquity, 
ascribed to Pythagoras himself; and it is 
impossible he could have made those dis- 
coveries without knowing many other pro- 
positions in mathematics. Aristotle men- 
tions the incommensurability of the diagonal 
of a square to its side, and gives a hint of 
the manner in which it was demonstrated. 
We find likewise some of the axioms of 
geometry mentioned by Aristotle as axioms, 
and as indemonstrable principles of mathe- 
matical reasoning. 

It is probable, therefore, that, before the 
time of Aristotle, there were elementary 
treatises of geometry, which are now lost ; 
and that in them the axioms were distin- 
guished from the propositions which require 
I roof. 

To suppose that so perfect a system as 
that of Euclid's " Elements" was produced 
by one man, without any preceding model 
or materials, would be to suppose Euclid 
more than a man. We ascribe to him as 
much as the weakness of human under- 
standing will permit, if we suppose that the 
inventions in geometry, which had been 
made in a tract of preceding ages, were by 
him not only carried much farther, but 
digested into so admirable a 6ystem that 
his work obscured all that went before it, 
and made them be forgot and lost. 

Perhaps, in like manner, the writings of 
Aristotle with regard to first principles, and 
with regard to many other abstract subjects, 
may have occasioned the loss of what had 
been written upon those subjects by more 
ancient philosophers. [634] 

Whatever may be in this, in his second 
book upon demonstration, he has treated 
very fully of first principles ; and, though he 
has not attempted any enumeration of them, 
he shews very clearly that all demonstra- 
tion must be built upon truths which are 
evident of themselves, but cannot be de- 
monstrated. His whole doctrine of syllo- 
gisms is grounded upon a few axioms, from 
which he endeavours to demonstrate the 
rules of syllogism in a mathematical way ; 



| and in his topics he points out many of the 
first principles of probable reasoning. 

As long as the philosophy of Aristotle 
prevailed, it was held as a fixed point, that 
all proof must be drawn from principles 
already known and granted. 

We must observe, however, that, in that 
philosophy, many things were assumed as 
first principles, which have no just claim 
to that character : such as, that the earth 
is at rest ; that nature abhors a vacuum ; 
that there is no change in the heavens above 
the sphere of the moon ; that the heavenly 
bodies move in circles, that being the most 
perfect figure ; that bodies do not gravitate 
in their proper place ; and many others. 

The Peripatetic philosophy, therefore, 
instead of being deficient in first principles, 
was redundant ; instead of rejecting those 
that are truly such, it adopted, as first 
principles, many vulgar prejudices and rash 
judgments : and this seems in general to 
have been the spirit of ancient philosophy. * 

It is true, there were among the ancients 
sceptical philosophers, who professed to have 
no principles, and held it to be the greatest 
virtue in a philosopher to withhold assent, 
and keep his judgment in a perfect equil - 
brium between contradictory opinions. But, 
though this sect was defended by some per- 
sons of great erudition and acuteness, it died 
of itself, and the dogmatic philosophy of 
Aristotle obtained a complete triumph over 
it. [635] 

What Mr Hume says of those who are 
sceptical with regard to moral distinctions 
seems to have had its accomplishment in 
the ancient sect of Sceptics. " The only 
way," says he, " of converting antagonists 
of this kind is to leave them to themselves ; 
for, finding that nobody keeps up the con- 
troversy with them, it is probable they will 
at last of themselves, from mere weariness, 
come over to the side of common sense and 
reason." 

Setting aside this small sect of the Scep- 
tics, which was extinct many ages before the 
authority of Aristotle declined, I know of 
no opposition made to first principles among 
the ancients. The disposition was, as has 
been observed, not to oppose, but to mul- 
tiply them beyond measure. 

Men have always been prone, when they 
leave one extreme, to run into the opposite ; 
and this spirit, in the ancient philosophy, to 
multiply first principles beyond reason, was 
a strong presage that, when the authority 
of the Peripatetic system was at an> end, 



* The Peripatetic philosophy did not assume any 
such principles as original and self-evident ; but pro- 
fessed to establish them all upon induction and gene- 
ralization. In practice its induction of instances 
might be imperfect, and its generalization from par- 
ticulars rash : but in theory, at least, it was correct, 
— H. 



[633-6351 



chap, vir.] OPINIONS ABOUT FIRST PRINCIPLES. 



463 



the next reigning system would diminish 
their number beyond reason. 

This, accordingly, happened in that great 
revolution of the philosophical republic 
brought about by Des Cartes. That truly 
great reformer in philosophy, cautious to 
a*void the snare in which Aristotle was 
taken, of admitting things as first principles 
too rashly, resolved to doubt of everything, 
and to withhold his assent, until it was forced 
by the clearest evidence.* 

Thus Des Cartes brought himself into 
that very state of suspense which the an- 
cient Sceptics recommended as the highest 
perfection of a wise man, and the only road 
to tranquillity of mind. But he did not 
remain long in this state ; his doubt did 
not arise from despair of finding the truth, 
but from caution, that he might not be im- 
posed upon, and embrace a cloud instead of 
a goddess. [636] 

His very doubting convinced him of his 
own existence ; for that which does not exist 
can neither doubt, nor believe, nor reason. 
Thus he emerged from universal scepti- 
cism by this short enthymeme, Cogito, ergo 
sum. 

This enthymeme consists of an antece- 
dent proposition, I think, and a conclusion 
drawn from it, therefore I exist. 

If it should be asked how Des Cartes 
came to be certain of the antecedent proposi- 
tion, it is evident that for this he trusted to 
the testimony of consciousness. He was con- 
scious that he thought, and needed no other 
argument. 

So that the first principle which he adopts 
in this famous enthymeme is this, That those 
doubts, and thoughts, and reasonings, of 
which he was conscious, did certainly exist, 
and that his consciousness put their exist- 
ence beyond all doubt. 

It might have been objected to this first 
principle of Des Cartes, How do you know 
that your consciousness cannot deceive you ? 
You have supposed that all you see, and 
hear, and handle, may be an illusion. Why, 
therefore, should the power of conscious- 
ness have this prerogative, to be believed 
implicitly, when all our other powers are 
supposed fallacious ? 

To this objection I know no other answer 
that can be made but that we find it im- 
possible to doubt of things of Avhich we are 
conscious. The constitution of our nature 
forces this belief upon us irresistibly. 

This is true, and is sufficient to justify 
Des Cartes in assuming, as a first principle, 
the existence of thought, of which he was 
conscious. [637] 

He ought, however, to have gone farther 
in this track, and to have considered whe- 
ther there may not be other first principles 



* On the Cartesian doubt, see Note R.— H. 
f636-638] 



which ought to be adopted for the same 
reason. But he did not see this to be ne- 
cessary, conceiving that, upon this on3 first 
principle, he could support the whole fabric 
of human knowledge. 

To proceed to the conclusion of Des 
Cartes's enthymeme. From the existence 
of his thought he infers his own existence. 
Here he assumes another first principle, 
not a contingent, but a necessary one ; to 
wit, that, where there is thought, there 
must be a thinking being or mind. 

Having thus established his own exist- 
ence, he proceeds to prove the existence of 
a supreme and infinitely perfect Being; 
and, from the perfection of the Deity, he 
infers that his senses, his memory, and the 
other faculties which God had given him, 
are not fallacious. 

Whereas other men, from the beginning 
of the world, had taken for granted, as a first 
principle, the truth and reality of what they 
perceive by their senses, and from thence 
inferred the existence of a Supreme Author 
and Maker of the world, Des Cartes took 
a contrary course, conceiving that the tes- 
timony of our senses, and of all our facul- 
ties, excepting that of consciousness, ought 
not to be taken for granted, but to be 
proved by argument. 

Perhaps some may think that Des Car- 
tes meant only to admit no other first prin- 
ciple of contingent truths besides that of 
consciousness ; but that he allowed the axi- 
oms of mathematics, and of other necessary 
truths, to be received without proof. [638] 

But I apprehend this was not his inten- 
tion ; for the truth of mathematical axioms 
must depend upon the truth of the faculty 
by which we judge of them. If the faculty 
be fallacious, we may be deceived by tri, st- 
ing to it. Therefore, as he supposes that 
all our faculties, excepting consciousness, 
may be fallacious, and attempts to prove 
by argument that they are not, it follows 
that, according to his principles, even ma- 
thematical axioms require proof. Neither 
did he allow that there are any necessary 
truths, but maintained, that the truths 
which are commonly so called, depend up- 
on the will of God. And we find his fol- 
lowers, who may be supposed to under- 
stand his principles, agree in maintaining, 
that the knowledge of our own existence is 
the first and fundamental principle from 
which all knowledge must be deduced by 
one who proceeds regularly in philosophy. 

There is, no doubt, a beauty in raising a 
large fabric of knowledge upon a few first 
principles. The stately fabric of mathema- 
tical knowledge, raised upon the foundation 
of a few axioms and definitions, charms 
every beholder. Des Cartes, who was well 
acquainted with this beauty in the mathe- 
matical sciences, seems to have been am • 



464 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



bitious to give the same beautiful simplicity 
to his system of philosophy ; and therefore 
sought only one first principle as the founda- 
tion of all our knowledge, at least of con- 
tingent truths. 

And so far has his authority prevailed, 
that those who came after him have 
almost universally followed him in this 
track. This, therefore, may be considered 
as the spirit of modern philosophy, to allow 
of no first principles of contingent truths 
but this one, that the thoughts and opera- 
tions of our own minds, of which we are 
conscious, are self-evidently real and true ; 
but that everything else that is contingent 
is to be proved by argument. 

The existence of a material world, and 
of what we perceive by our senses, is not 
self-evident, according to this philosophy. 
Des Cartes founded it upon this argument, 
that God, who hath given us our senses, 
and all our faculties, is no deceiver, and 
therefore they are not fallacious. [639] 

I endeavoured to shew that, if it be not 
admitted as a first principle, that our facul- 
ties are not fallacious, nothing else can be 
admitted ; and that it is impossible to prove 
this by argument, unless God should give us 
new faculties to sit in judgment upon the old. 

Father Malebranche agreed with Des 
Cartes, that the existence of a material 
world requires proof ; but, being dissatisfied 
with Des Cartes's argument from the per- 
fection of the Deity, thought that the only 
solid proof is from divine revelation. 

Arnauld, who was engaged in controversy 
with Malebranche, approves of his anta- 
gonist in offering an argument to prove the 
existence of the material world, but objects 
to the solidity of his argument, and offers 
other arguments of his own. 

Mr Norris, a great admirer of Des Cartes 
and of Malebranche, seems to have thought 
all the arguments offered by them and by 
Arnauld to be weak, and confesses that we 
have, at best, only probable evidence of the 
existence of the material world. 

Mr Locke acknowledges that the evidence 
we have of this point is neither intuitive 
nor demonstrative ; yet he thinks it may 
be called knowledge, and distinguishes it 
by the name of sensitive knowledge ; and, 
as the ground of this sensitive knowledge, 
he offers some weak arguments, which would 
rather tempt one to doubt than to believe. 

At last, Bishop Berkeley and Arthur 
Collier, without any knowledge of each 
other, as far as appears by their writings, 
undertook to prove, that there neither is 
nor can be a material world. The excel- 
lent style and elegant composition of the 
former have made his writings to be known 
and read, and this system to be attributed 
to him only, as if Collier had never ex- 
isted. [6401 



Both, indeed, owe so much to Male- 
branche, that, if we take out of his system 
the peculiarities of our seeing all things in 
God, and our learning the existence of an 
external world from divine revelation, what 
remains is just the system of Bishop Berke- 
ley. I make this observation, by the way, 
in justice to a foreign author, to whom 
British authors seem not to have allowed 
all that is due.* 

Mr Hume hath adopted Bishop Berke- 
ley's arguments against the existence of 
matter, and thinks them unanswerable. 

We may observe, that this great meta- 
physician, though in general he declares in 
favour of universal scepticism, and there- 
fore may seem to have no first principles at 
all, yet, with Des Cartes, he always acknow- 
ledges the reality of those thoughts and 
operations of mind of which we are con- 
scious.-}- So that he yields the antecedent 
of Des Cartes's enthymeme cogito, but 
denies the conclusion ergo sum, the mind 
being, according to him, nothing but that 
train of impressions and ideas of which we 
are conscious. 

Thus, we see that the modern philosophy, 
of which Des Cartes may justly be ac- 
counted the founder, being built upon the 
ruins of the Peripatetic, has a spirit quite 
opposite, and runs into a contrary extreme. 
The Peripatetic not only adopted as first 
principles those which mankind have always 
rested upon in their most important trans- 
actions, but, along with them, many vulgar 
prejudices ; so that this system was founded 
upon a wide bottom, but in many parts 
unsound. The modern system has nar- 
rowed the foundation so much, that every 
superstructure raised upon it appears top- 
heavy. 

From the single principle of the exist- 
ence of our own thoughts, very little, if any 
thing, can be deduced by just reasoning, 
especially if we suppose that all our other 
faculties may be fallacious. 

Accordingly, we find that Mr Hume was 
not the first that was led into scepticism by 
the want of first principles. For, soon after 
Des Cartes, there arose a sect in France 
called Egoists, who maintained that we 
have no evidence jof the existence of any- 
thing but ourselves. % [641] 

Whether these egoists, like Mr Hume, 



* If I recollect aright, (I write this note at a di>s- 
tance from books,) Locke explicitly anticipates the 
Berkeleian idealism in his "Examination of Father 
Malebranche's Opinion." This was also done Dy 
Bayle. In fact, Malebranche, and many others be- 
fore him, would inevitably have become Idealists, 
had they not been Catholics. But an Idealist, as I 
have already observed, no consistent Catholic could 
be. See above, p. 2S5, note t> and p. 35S, note *. 
— H. 

f See above, p. 442, b, not^. — H. 

% See above p. 269, a, note \ ; and p. 293, b, note 
*.— H. 



[639-641] 



chap, vii.] OPINIONS ABOUT FIRST PRINCIPLES. 



465 



believed themselves to be nothing but a train 
of ideas and impressions, or to have a more 
permanent existence, I have not learned, 
having never seen any of their writings ; nor 
do I know whether any of this sect did write 
in support of their principles. One would 
think they who did not believe that there 
was any person to read, could have little 
inducement to write, unless they were 
prompted by that inward monitor which 
Persius makes to be the source of genius 
and the teacher of arts. There can be no 
doubt, however, of the existence of such a 
sect, as they are mentioned by many 
authors, and refuted by some, particularly 
by Buffier, in his treatise of first principles. 

Those Egoists and Mr Hume seem to 
me to have reasoned more consequentially 
from Des Cartes' principle than he did him- 
self ; and, indeed, I cannot help thinking, 
that all who have followed Des Cartes' 
method, of requiring proof by argument of 
everything except the existence of their 
own thoughts, have escaped the abyss of 
scepticism by the help of weak reasoning 
and strong faith more than by any other 
means. And they seem to me to act more 
consistently, who, having rejected the first 
principles on which belief must be grounded, 
have no belief, than they, who, like the 
others, rejecting first principles, must yet 
have a system of belief, without any solid 
foundation on which it may stand. 

The philosophers I have hitherto men- 
tioned, after the time of Des Cartes, have 
all followed his method, in resting upon the 
truth of their own thoughts as a first 
principle, but requiring arguments for the 
proof of every other truth of a contingent 
nature; but none of them, excepting Mr 
Locke, has expressly treated of first princi- 
ples, or given any opinion of their utility or 
inutility. We only collect their opinion 
from their following Des Cartes in requir- 
ing proof, or pretending to offer proof of 
the existence of a material world, which 
surely ought to be received as a first princi- 
ple, if anything be, beyond what we are 
conscious of. [642] 

I proceed, therefore, to consider what 
Mr Locke has said on the subject of first 
principles or maxims. 

I have not the least doubt of this author's 
candour in what he somewhere says, that 
his essay was mostly spun out of his own 
thoughts. Yet, it is certain, that, in many 
of the notions which we are wont to ascribe 
to him, others were before him, particularly 
pes Cartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes. Nor 
is it at all to be thought strange, that inge- 
nious men, when they are got into the 
same track, should hit upon the same 
things. 

But, in the definition which he gives of 
knowledge in general, and in his notions 
[642, 643] 



concerning axioms or first principles, 1 
know none that went before him, though 
he has been very generally followed in both. 

His definition of knowledge, that it con- 
sists si lely in the perception of the agree- 
ment or disagreement of our ideas, has been 
already considered. But supposing it to be 
just, still it would be true, that some agree- 
ments and disagreements of ideas must be 
immediately perceived ; and such agree- 
ments or disagreements, when they are 
expressed by affirmative or negative propo- 
sitions, are first principles, because their 
truth is immediately discerned as soon as 
they are understood. 

This, I think, is granted by Mr Locke, 
book 4, chap. 2. " There is a part of our 
knowledge," says he, " which we may call 
intuitive. In this the mind is at no pains 
of proving or examining, but perceives the 
truth as the eye does light, only by being 
directed toward it. And this kind of know- 
ledge is the clearest and most certain that 
human frailty is capable of. This part of 
knowledge is irresistible, and, like bright 
sunshine, forces itself immediately to be 
perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns 
its view that way." [643] 

He farther observes — " That this intui- 
tive knowledge is necessary to connect all 
the steps of a demonstration."* 

From this, I think, it necessarily follows, 
that, in every branch of knowledge, we 
must make use of truths that are intuitively 
known, in order to deduce from them such 
as require proof. 

But I cannot reconcile this with what he 
says, § 8, of the same chapter : — " The 
necessity of this intuitive knowledge in every 
step of scientifical or demonstrative reason- 
ing gave occasion, I imagine, to that mis- 
taken axiom, that all reasoning was^.v pne- 
ccguitis et prceconcessis, which, how far it is 
mistaken, I shall have occasion to shew 
more at large, when I come to consider 
propositions, and particularly those proposi- 
tions which are called maxims, and to shew 
that it is by a mistake that they are sup- 
posed to be the foundation of all our know- 
ledge and reasonings." 

1 have carefully considered the chapter 
on maxims, which Mr Locke here refers to ; 
and, though one would expect, from the 
quotation last made, that it should run con- 
trary to what I have before delivered con- 
cerning first principles, I find only two or 
three sentences in it, and those chiefly inci- 
dental, to which I do not assent ; and I am 
always happy in agreeing with a philoso- 
pher whom I so highly respect. 

He endeavours to shew that axioms or 
intuitive truths are not innate. -J* 



* See Stewart's " Elements," ii. p. 49.— H. 
t He does more. He attempts to shew that they 
are all generalizations from experience ; whereas ex- 
2 n 



466 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



To this I agree. I maintain only, that 
when the understanding is ripe, and when 
we distinctly apprehend such truths, we 
immediately assent to them. [644] 

He observes, that self-evidence is not 
peculiar to those propositions which pass 
under the name of axioms, and have the 
dignity of axioms ascribed to them. ' 

I grant that there are innumerable self- 
evident propositions, which have neither 
dignity nor utility, and, therefore, deserve 
not the name of axioms, as that name is 
commonly understood to imply not only 
self-evidence, but some degree of dignity or 
utility. That a man is a man, and that a 
man is not a horse, are self-evident propo- 
sitions ; but they are, as Mr Locke very 
justly calls them, trifling propositions. Til- 
lotson very wittily says of such propositions, 
that they are so surfeited with truth, that 
they are good for nothing ; and as they de- 
serve not the name of axioms, so neither 
do they deserve the name of knowledge. 

He observes, that such trifling self-evi- 
dent propositions as we have named are not 
derived from axioms, and therefore that all 
our knowledge is not derived from axioms. 

I grant that they are not derived from 
axioms, because they are themselves self- 
evident. But it is an abuse of words to call 
them knowledge, as it is, to call them 
axioms ; for no man can be said to be the 
wiser or more knowing for having millions of 
them in store. 

He observes, that the particular propo- 
sitions contained under a general axiom are 
no less self-evident than the general axiom, 
and that they are sooner known and under- 
stood. Thus, it is as evident that my hand 
is less than my body, as that a part is less 
than the whole ; and I know the truth of 
the particular proposition sooner than that 
of the general. 

This is true. A man cannot perceive the 
truth of a general axiom, such as, that a 
part is less than the whole, until he has the 
general notions of a part and a whole formed 
in his mind ; and, before he has these 
general notions, he may perceive that his 
hand is less than his body. [645] 

A great part of this chapter on maxims 
is levelled against a notion, which, it seems, 
some have entertained, that all our know- 
ledge is derived from these two maxims — 
to wit, whatever is, is ; and it is impossible 
for the same thing to be, and not to be. * 

This I take to be a ridiculous notion, 
justly deserving the treatment which Mr 



perience on'y affords the occasions on which the 
native (not innate) or a priori cognitions, virtually 
possessed by the mind, actually manifest their exist, 
ence.— H. 

* These are called, the principle of Identity, and the 
principle of Contradiction, or. more properly, Non. 
contradiction.— H. 



Locke has given it, if it at all merited his 
notice. These are identical propositions ; 
they are trifling, and surfeited with truth. 
No knowledge can be derived from them. 

Having mentioned how far I agree with 
Mr Locke concerning maxims or first prin- 
ciples, I shall next take notice of two or 
three things, wherein I cannot agree with 
him. 

In the seventh section of this chapter, he 
says, That, concerning the real existence of 
all other beings, besides ourselves and a 
first cause, there are no maxims. 

I have endeavoured to shew that there 
are maxims, or first principles, with regard 
to other existences. Mr Locke acknowledges 
that we have a knowledge of such existences, 
which, he savs, is neither intuitive nor de- 
monstrative, and which, therefore, he calls 
sensitive knowledge. It is demonstrable, 
and was long ago demonstrated by Aristotle, 
that every proposition to which we give a 
rational assent, must either have its evi- 
dence in itself, or derive it from some ante- 
cedent proposition. And the same thing 
may be said of the antecedent proposition. 
As, therefore, we cannot go back to ante- 
cedent propositions without end, the evi- 
dence must at last rest upon propositions, 
one or more, which have their evidence in 
themselves — that is, upon first principles. 

As to the evidence of our own existence, 
and of the existence of a first cause, Mr 
Locke does not say whether it rests upon 
first principles or not. But it is manifest, 
from what he has said upon both, that it 
does. [646] 

With regard to our own existence, says 
he, we perceive it so plainly and so cer- 
tainly that it neither needs nor is capable 
of any proof. This is as much as to say 
that our own existence is a first principle ; 
for it is applying to this truth the very 
definition of a first principle. 

He adds, that, if I doubt, that very doubt 
makes me perceive my own existence, and 
will not suffer me to doubt of that. If I 
feel pain, I have as certain perception of 
my existence as of the pain I feel. 

Here we have two first principles plainly 
implied — First, That my feeling pain, or 
being conscious of pain, is a certain evidence 
of the real existence of that pain ; and, 
secondly, That pain cannot exist without a 
mind or being that is pained. That these 
are first principles, and incapable of proof, 
Mr Locke acknowledges. And it is certain, 
that, if they are not true, we can have no 
evidence of our own existence ; for, if we 
may feel pain when no pain really exists, or 
if pain may exist without any being that is 
pained, then it is certain that our feeling 
pain can give us no evidence of our ex- 
istence. 

Thus, it appears that the evidence of our 
[644-646] 



chap, vii.] OPINIONS ABOUT FIRST PRINCIPLES. 



467 



own existence, according to the view that 
Mr Locke gives of it, is grounded upon two 
of those first principles which we had occa- 
sion to mention. 

If we consider the argument he has given 
for the existence of a first intelligent cause, 
it is no less evident that it is grounded upon 
other two of them. The first, That what 
begins to exist must have a cause of its ex- 
istence ; and the second, That an unintelli- 
gent and unthinking being cannot be the 
cause of beings that are thinking and in- 
telligent. Upon these two principles, he 
argues, very convincingly, for the existence 
of a first intelligent cause of things. And, 
if these principles are not true, we can have 
no proof of the existence of a first cause, 
either from our own existence, or from the 
existence of other things that fall within our 
view. [647] 

Another thing advanced by Mr Locke 
upon this subject is, that no science is or 
hath been built upon maxims. 

Surely Mr Locke was not ignorant of 
geometry, which hath been built upon 
maxims prefixed to the elements, as far back 
as we are able to trace it. - But, though 
they had not been prefixed, which was a 
matter of utility rather than necessity, yet 
it must be granted that every demonstra- 
tion in geometry is grounded either upon 
propositions formerly demonstrated, or upon 
self-evident principles. 

Mr Locke farther says, that maxims are 
not of use to help men forward in the ad- 
vancement of the sciences, or new dis- 
coveries of yet unknown truths ; that New- 
ton, in the discoveries he has made in his 
never- enough-to-be-admired book, has not 
been assisted by the general maxims — what- 
ever is, is ; or, the whole is greater than a 
part ; or the like. 

I answer, the first of these is, as was be- 
fore observed, an identical trifling proposi- 
tion, of no use in mathematics, or in any 
other science. The second is often used by 
Newton, and by all mathematicians, and 
many demonstrations rest upon it. In 
general, Newton, as well as all other mathe- 
maticians, grounds his demonstrations of 
mathematical propositions upon the axioms 
laid down by Euclid, or upon propositions 
which have been before demonstrated by 
help of those axioms. [643] 

But it deserves to be particularly observed, 
that Newton, intending, in the third book of 
his " Principia," to give a more scientific 
form to the physical part of astronomy, 
which he had at first composed in a popular 
form, thought proper to follow the example 
of Euclid, and to lay down first, in what he 



* Compare Stewart's " Elements," ii. pp. 38, 43, 
196. On this subject, "satius est silerequam parum 
dicere."— H. 



£647-649] 



calls " Rcgulce Philosnphandi" and in his 
" Phenomena" the first principles which he 
assumes in his reasoning. 

Nothing, therefore, could have been more 
unluckily adduced by Mr Locke to support 
his aversion to first principles, than the ex- 
ample of Sir Isaac Newton, who, by laying 
down the first principles upon which he rea- 
sons in those parts of natural philosophy 
which he cultivated, has given a stability to 
that science which it never had before, and 
which it will retain to the end of the world. 

I am now to give some account of a philo- 
sopher, who wrote expressly on the subject 
of first principles, after Mr Locke. 

Pere Buffier, a French Jesuit, first pub- 
lished his " Traite des premiers Veritez, et 
de la Source de nos Jugements" in 8vo, if 
I mistake not, in the year 1724. It was 
afterwards published in folio, as a part of 
his " Cours des- Sciences." Paris, 1732. 

He defines first principles to be proposi- 
tions so clear that they can neither be 
proved nor combated by those that are more 
clear. 

The first source of first principles he men- 
tions, is, that intimate conviction which 
every man has of his own existence, and of 
what passes in his own mind. Some philo- 
sophers, he observes, admitted these as first 
principles, who were unwilling to admit any 
others ; and he shews the strange conse- 
quences that follow from this system. 

A second source of first principles he 
makes to be common sense ; which, he ob- 
serves, philosophers have not been wont to 
consider. He defines it to be the disposi- 
tion which Nature has planted in all men, 
or the far greater part, which leads them, 
when they come to the use of reason, to form 
a common and uniform judgment upon 
objects which are not objects of conscious- 
ness, nor are founded on any antecedent 
judgment. [649] 

He mentions, not as a full enumeration, 
but as a specimen, the following principles 
of common sense. 

1. That there are other beings and other 
men in the universe, besides myself. 

2. That there is in them something that 
is called truth, wisdom, prudence ; and that 
these things are not purely arbitrary. 

3. That there is something in me which 
I call intelligence, and something which is 
not that intelligence, which I call my body ; 
and that these things have different pro- 
perties. 

4. That all men are not in a conspiracy 
to deceive me and impose upon my cre- 
dulity. 

5. That what has not intelligence cannot 
produce the effects of intelligence, nor can 
pieces of matter thrown together by chance 
form any regular work, such as a clock or 
watch. 

2 h2 



468 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



He explains very particularly the several 
parts of his definition of common sense, 
and shews how the dictates of common 
sense may be distinguished from common 
prejudices ; and then enters into a particular 
consideration of the primary truths that 
concern being in general ; the truths that 
concern thinking beings ; those that concern 
body ; and those on which the various 
branches of human knowledge are grounded. 

I shall not enter into a detail of his sen- 
timents on these subjects. I think there is 
more which I take to be original in this 
treatise than in most books of the meta- 
physical kind I have met with ; that many 
of his notions are solid; and that others, 
which I cannot altogether approve, are 
ingenious. [650] 

The other writers I have mentioned, 
after Des Cartes, may, I think, 'without 
impropriety, be called Cartesians. For, 
though they differ from Des Cartes in some 
things, and contradict him in others, yet 
they set*out from the same principles, and 
follow the same method, admitting no other 
first principle with regard to the existence 
of things but their own existence, and the 
existence of those operations of mind of 
which they are conscious, and requiring 
that the existence of a material world, and 
the existence of other men and things, 
should be proved by argument. 

This method of philosophising is common 
to Des Cartes, Malebranche, Arnauld, 
Locke, Norris, Collier, Berkeley, and Hume ; 
and, as it was introduced by Des Cartes, I 
call it the Cartesian system, and those who 
follow it Cartesians, not intending any dis- 
respect by this term, but to signify a parti- 
cular method of philosophising common to 
them all, and begun by Des Cartes. 

Some of these have gone the utmost 
length in scepticism, leaving no existence 
in nature but that of ideas and impressions. 
Some have endeavoured to throw off the 
belief of a material world only, and to leave 
us ideas and spirits. All of them have 
fallen into very gross paradoxes, which can 
never sit easy upon the human understand- 
ing, and which, though adopted in the 
closet, men find themselves under a ne- 
cessity of throwing off and disclaiming when 
they enter into society. 

Indeed, in my judgment, those who have 
reasoned most acutely and consequentially 
upon this system, are they that have gone 
deepest into scepticism. 

Father Buffier, however, is no Cartesian 
in this sense. He seems to have perceived 
the defects of the Cartesian system while 
it was in the meridian of its glory, and to 
have been aware that a ridiculous scepticism 
is the natural issue of it, and therefore 
nobly attempted to lay a broader founda- 
tion for human knowledge, and has the 



honour of being the first, as far as I know, 
after Aristotle, who has given the world a 
just treatise upon first principles. [651] 

Some late writers, particularly Dr Os- 
wald, Dr Beattie, and Dr Campbell, have 
been led into a way of thiuking somewhat 
similar to that of Buffier ; the two former, 
as I have reason to believe, without any in- 
tercourse with one another, or any know- 
ledge of what Buffier had wrote on the sub- 
ject. Indeed, a man who thinks, and who 
is acquainted with the philosophy of Mr 
Hume, will very naturally be led to appre- 
hend, that, to support the fabric of human 
knowledge, some other principles are neces- 
sary than those of Des Cartes and Mr 
Locke. Buffier must be acknowledged to 
have the merit of having discovered this, 
before the consequences of the Cartesian 
system were so fully displayed as they have 
been by Mr Hume. But I am apt to think 
that the man who does not see this now, 
must have but a superficial knowledge of 
these subjects.* 

The three writers above mentioned have 
ray high esteem and affection as men ; but 
I intend to say nothing of them as writers 
upon this subject, that I may not incur the 
censure of partiality. Two of them have 
been joined so closely with me in the anim- 
adversions of a celebrated writer, -f- that 
we may be thought too near of kin to give 
our testimony of one another. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF PREJUDICES, THE CAUSES OF ERROR. 

Our intellectual powers are wisely fitted 
by the Author of our nature for the disco- 
very of truth,. as far as suits our present 
state. Error is not their natural issue, any 
more than disease is of the natural structure 
of the body. Yet, as we are liable to vari- 
ous diseases of body from accidental causes, 
external and internal ; so we are, from like 
causes, liable to wrong judgments. [652] 

Medical writers have endeavoured to enu- 
merate the diseases of the body, and to re- 
duce them to a system, under the name of 
nosology ; and it were to be wished that we 
had also a nosology of the human under- 
standing. 

When we know a disorder of the body, 
we are often at a loss to find the proper 
remedy ; but in most cases the disorders of 
the understanding point out their remedies 
so plainly, that he who knows the one must 
know the other. 

Many authors have furnished useful ma- 
terials for this purpose, and some have en- 
deavoured to reduce them to a system. I 



* See Note A.— H. 



t Priestley.— H. 
[650-852] 



cuap. viii.] OF PIIEJUDICES, THE CAUSES OF ERROR. 



469 



like best the general division given of thein 
by Lord Bacon, in his fifth book " De Aug- 
tnevJis Scientiarum" and more fully treated 
in his " Novum Organutn." He divides 
them into four classes — idola tribus, idola 
specus, idola fori, and idola theatri. The 
names are perhaps fanciful ; but I think 
the division judicious, like most of the pro- 
ductions of that wonderful genius. And as 
this division was first made by him, he may 
be indulged the privilege of giving names 
to its several members. 

I propose in this chapter to explain the 
several members of this division, according 
to the meaning of the author, and to give 
instances of each, without confining myself 
to those which Lord Bacon has given, and 
without pretending to a complete enumera- 
tion. 

To every bias of the understanding, by which 
a man may be misled in judging, or drawn 
into error, Lord Bacon gives the name of 
an idol. The understanding, in its natural 
and best state, pays its homage to truth 
only. The causes of error are considered 
by him as so many false deities, who receive 
the homage which is due only to truth. 
[653] 

A. The first class are the idola tribus. 
The.-e are such as beset the whole human 
species ,' so that every man is in danger 
from them. They arise from principles of 
the human constitution, which are highly 
useful and necessary in our present state ; 
but, by their excess or defect, or wrong 
direction, may lead us into error. 

As the active principles of the human 
frame are wisely contrived by the Author 
of our being for the direction of our ac- 
tions, and yet, without proper regulation 
and restraint, are apt to lead us wrong, so 
it is also with regard to those parts of our 
constitution that have influence upon our 
opinions. Of this we may take the follow- 
ing instances : — 

1. First, — Men are prone to be led too 
much by authority in their opinions. 

In the first part of life, we have no other 
guide ; and, without a disposition to receive 
implicitly what we are taught, we should 
be incapable of instruction, and incapable 
of improvement. 

When judgment is ripe, there are many 
things in which we are incompetent judges. 
In such matters, it is most reasonable to 
rely upon the judgment of those whom we 
believe to be competent and disinterested. 
The highest court of judicature in the 
nation relies upon the authority of lawyers 
and physicians in matters belonging to 
their respective professions. 

Even in matters which we have access 
to know, authority always will have, and 
ought to have, more or less weight, in pro- 
portion to the evidence on which our own 
[> 53- 65 5] 



judgment rests, and the opinion we have of 
the judgment and candour of those who 
differ from us, or agree with us The 
modest man, conscious of his own fal- 
libility in judging, is in danger of giving 
too much to authority; the arrogant of 
giving too little. [654] 

In all matters belonging to our cog- 
nizance, every man must be determined by 
his own final judgment, otherwise he does 
not act the part of a rational being. 
Authority may add weight to one scale ; 
but the man holds the balance, and judges 
what weight he ought to allow to authority. 

If a man should even claim infallibility, 
we must judge of his title to that preroga- 
tive. If a man pretend to be an ambassa- 
dor from heaven, we must judge of his 
credentials. No claim can _ deprive us of 
this right, or excuse us for neglecting to 
exercise it. 

As, therefore, our regard to authority 
may be either too great or too small, the 
bias of human nature seems to lean to the 
first of these extremes ; and I believe it is 
good for men in general that it should do so. 

When this bias concurs with an in differ. 
ence about truth, its operation will be the 
more powerful. 

The love of truth is natural to man, and 
strong in every well-disposed mind. But 
it may be overborne by party zeal, by 
vanity, by the desire of victory, or even by 
laziness. When it is superior to these, it 
is a manly virtue, and requires the exer- 
cise of industry, fortitude, self-denial, can- 
dour, and openness to conviction. 

As there are persons in the world of so 
mean and abject a spirit that they rather 
choose to owe their subsistence to the 
charity of others, than by industry to ac- 
quire some property of their own ; so there 
are many more who may be called mere 
beggars with regard to their opinions. 
Through laziness and indifference about 
truth, they leave to others the drudgery of 
digging for this commodity ; they can have 
enough at second hand to serve their occa- 
sions. Their concern is not to know what 
is true, but what is said and thought on 
such subjects ; and their understanding, 
like their clothes, is cut according to the 
fashion. [655] 

This distemper of the understanding has 
taken so deep root in a great part of man- 
kind, that it can hardly be said that they 
use their own judgment in things that do 
not concern their temporal interest. Nor is 
it peculiar to the ignorant ; it infects all 
ranks. We may guess their opinions when 
we know where they were born, of what 
parents, how educated, and what company 
they have kept. These circumstances de- 
termine their opinions in religion, in politics, 
and in philosophy. 



470 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



2. A second general prejudice arises from 
a disposition to measure things less known 
and less familiar, by those that are better 
known and more familiar. 

This is the foundation of analogical rea- 
soning, to which we have a great proneness 
by nature, and to it indeed we owe a great 
part of our knowledge. It would be absurd 
to lay aside this kind of reasoning altogether, 
and it is difficult to judge how far we may 
venture upon it. The bias of human nature 
is to judge from too slight analogies. 

The objects of sense engross our thoughts 
m the first part of life, and are most fami- 
liar through the whole of it. Hence, in all 
ages men have been prone to attribute the 
human figure and human passions and frail- 
ties to superior intelligences, and even to 
the Supreme Being. 

There is a disposition in men to mate- 
rialize everything, if I may be allowed the 
expression ; that is, to apply the notions we 
have of material objects to things of another 
nature. Thought is considered as analogous 
to motion in a body ; and as bodies are put 
in motion by impulses, and by impressions 
made upon them by contiguous objects, we 
are apt to conclude that the mind is made 
to think by impressions made upon it, and 
that there must be some kind of contiguity 
between it and the objects of thought. 
Hence the theories of ideas and impressions 
have so generally prevailed. [656] 

Because the most perfect works of human 
artists are made after a model, and of ma- 
terials that before existed, the ancient phi- 
losophers universally believed that the world 
was made of a pre-existent uncreated matter ; 
and many of them, that there were eternal 
and uncreated models of every species of 
things which God made. 

The mistakes in common life, which are 
owing to this prejudice, are innumerable, 
and cannot escape the slightest observation. 
Men judge of other men by themselves, or 
by the small circle of their acquaintance. 
The selfish man thinks all pretences to be- 
nevolence and public spirit to be mere 
hypocrisy or self-deceit. The generous and 
open-hearted believe fair pretences too 
easily, and are apt to think men better than 
they really are. The abandoned and pro- 
fligate can hardly be persuaded that there 
is any such thing as real virtue in the world. 
The rustic forms his notions of the man- 
ners and characters of men from those of 
his country village, and is easily duped when 
he comes into a great city. 

It is commonly taken for granted, that 
this narrow way of judging of men is to be 
cured only by an extensive intercourse with 
men of different ranks, professions, and 
nations ; and that the man whose acquaint- 
ance has been confined within a narrow 
^ircle, must have many prejudices and nar- 



row notions, which a more extensive inter- 
course would have, cured. 

3. Men are often led into error by the 
love of simplicity, which disposes us to re- 
duce things to few principles, and to con- 
ceive a greater simplicity in nature than 
there really is.* [ 657 ] 

To love simplicity, and to be pleased with 
it wherever we find it, is no imperfection, 
but the contrary. It is the result of good 
taste. "We cannot but be pleased to ob- 
serve, that all the changes of motion pro- 
duced by the collision of bodies, hard, soft, 
or elastic, are reducible to three simple 
laws of motion, which the industry of phi- 
losophers has discovered. 

When we consider what a prodigious 
variety of effects depend upon the law of 
gravitation ; how many phenomena in the 
earth, sea, and air, which, in all preceding 
ages, had tortured the wits of philosophers, 
and occasioned a thousand vain theories, 
are shewn to be the necessary consequences 
of this one law ; how the whole system of 
sun, moon, planets, primary and secondary, 
and comets, are kept in order by it, and 
their seeming irregularities accounted for 
and reduced to accurate measure — the sim- 
plicity of the cause, and the beauty and 
variety of the effects, must give pleasure to 
every contemplative mind. By this noble 
discovery, we are taken, as it were, behind 
the scene in this great drama of nature, 
and made to behold some part of the art of 
the divine Author of this system, which, 
before this discovery, eye had not seen, nor 
ear heard, nor had it entered into the heart 
of man to conceive. 

There is, without doubt, in every work 
of nature, all the beautiful simplicity that is 
consistent with the end for which it was 
made. But, if we hope to discover how 
nature brings about its ends, merely from 
this principle, that it operates in the simplest 
and best way, we deceive ourselves, and 
forget that the wisdom of nature is more 
above the wisdom of man, than man's wis- 
dom is above that of a child. 

If a child should sit down to contrive how 
a city is to be fortified, or an army arranged 
in the day of battle, he would, no doubt, 
conjecture what, to his understanding, ap- 
peared the simplest and best way. But 
could he ever hit upon the true way ? No 
surely. When he learns from fact how 
these effects are produced, he will then see 
how foolish his childish conjectures were. 
[658] 

We may learn something of the way in 
which nature operates from fact and ob- 
servation ; but, if we conclude that it ope- 
rates in such a manner, only because to our 



* See " Inquiry," ch. vii. \ 3, above, p. 206, sqq 
— H. 



[656-658] 



chap, viii.] OF PREJUDICES, THE CAUSES OF ERROR. 



471 



understanding that appears to be the best 
and simplest manner, we shall always go 
wrong. 

It was believed, for many ages, that all 
the variety of concrete bodies we find on 
this globe is reducible to four elements, of 
which they are compounded, and into which 
they may be resolved. It was the simpli- 
city of this theory, and not any evidence 
from fact, that made it to be so generally 
received ; for the more it is examined, we 
find the less ground to believe it. 

The Pythagoreans and Platonists were 
carried farther by the same love of sim- 
plicity. Pythagoras, by his skill in mathe- 
matics, discovered, that there can be . no 
more than five regular solid figures, ter- 
minated by plain surfaces, which are all 
similar and equal; to wit, the tetrahedron, 
the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, 
and the eicosihedron. As nature works in 
the most simple and regular way, he thought 
that all the elementary bodies must have 
one or other of those regular figures ; and 
that the discovery of the properties and 
relations of the regular solids would be a 
key to open the mysteries of nature. 

This notion of the Pythagoreans and 
Platonists has undoubtedly great beauty 
and simplicity. Accordingly it prevailed, 
at least, to the time of Euclid. He was 
a Platonic philosopher, and is said to have 
wrote all the books of his " Elements" in 
order to discover the properties and rela- 
tions of the five regular solids. This ancient 
tradition of the intention of Euclid in writing 
his " Elements," is countenanced by the 
work itself. For the last books of the 
" Elements" treat of the regular solids, and 
all the preceding are subservient to the 
last. [659] 

So that this most ancient mathematical 
work, which, for its admirable composition, 
has served as a model to all succeeding 
writers in mathematics, seems, like the two 
first books of Newton's "Principia," to 
have been intended by its author to exhibit 
the mathematical principles of natural phi- 
sophy. 

It was long believed, that all the qualities 
of bodies,* and all their medical virtues, 
were reducible to four — moisture and dry- 
ness, heat and cold; and that there are 
only four temperaments of the human body — 
the sanguine, the melancholy, the bilious, 
and the phlegmatic. The chemical system, 
of reducing all bodies to salt, sulphur, and 
mercury, was of the same kind. For how 
many ages did men believe, that the division 
of all the objects of thought into ten cate- 
gories, and of all that can be affirmed or 
denied of anything, into five universals or 
predicables, were perfect enumerations ? 

"~* Only the qualitatcs primes of the Peripatetics.— 

H. 

[65f), 66 o] 



The evidence from reason that could be 
produced for those systems was next to no- 
thing, and bore no proportion to the ground 
they gained in the belief of men ; but they 
were simple and regular, and reduced things 
to a few principles ; and this supplied their 
want of evidence. 

Of all the systems we know, that of Des 
Cartes was most remarkable for its sim- 
plicity.* Upon one proposition, / I '.ink, 
he builds the whole fabric of human know- 
ledge. And from mere matter, with a 
certain quantity of motion given it at first, 
he accounts for all the phaenomena of the 
material world. 

The physical part of this system was 
mere hypothesis. It had nothing to re- 
commend it but its simplicity ; yet it had 
force enough to overturn the system of 
Aristotle, after that system had prevailed 
for more than a thousand years. 

The principle of gravitation, and other 
attracting and repelling forces, after Sir 
Isaac Newton had given the strongest evi- 
dence of their real existence in nature, were 
rejected by the greatest part of Europe for 
half a century, because they could not be 
accounted for by matter and motion. So 
much were men enamoured with the sim- 
plicity of the Cartesian system. [660] 

Nay, I apprehend, it was this love of 
simplicity, more than real evidence, that led 
Newton himself to say, in the preface to his 
" Principia," speaking of the phaenomena 
of the material world — " Nam multa me 
movent ut nonnihil suspicer, ea omnia ex 
viribus quibusdam pendere posse, quibus 
corporum particular, per causas nondum 
cognitas, vel in se mutuo impelluntur, et 
secundum figuras regulares cohaerent, vel 
ab invicem fugantur et recedunt." For 
certainly we have no evidence from fact, 
that all the phaenomena of the material 
world are produced by attracting or repell- 
ing forces. 

With his usual modesty, he proposes it 
only as a slight suspicion ; and the ground 
of this suspicion could only be, that he saw- 
that many of the phaenomena of nature de- 
pended upon causes of this kind ; and there- 
fore was disposed, from the simplicity of 
nature, to think that all do. 

When a real cause is discovered, the 
same love of simplicity leads men to attri- 
bute effects to it which are beyond its pro- 
vince. 

A medicine that is found to be of great 
use in one distemper, commonly has its 
virtues multiplied, till it becomes a panacea. 
Those who have lived long, can recollect 
many instances of this. In other branches 
of knowledge, the same thing often happens. 
When the attention of men is turned to any 

* See above, p. 206, b, note f.— H. 



472 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



particular cause, by discovering it to have 
remarkable effects, they are in great danger 
of extending its influence, upon slight evi- 
dence, to things with which it has no con- 
nection. Such prejudices arise from the 
natural desire of simplifying natural causes, 
and of accounting for many phsenomena 
from the same principle. [661] 

4. One of the most copious sources of 
error in philosophy is the misapplication of 
our noblest intellectual power to purposes for 
which it is incompetent. 

Of all the intellectual powers of man, 
that of invention bears the highest price. 
It resembles most the power of creation, 
and is honoured with that name. 

We admire the man who shews a supe- 
riority in the talent of finding the means of 
accomplishing an end ; who can, by a happy 
combination, produce an effect, or make a 
discovery beyond the reach of other men ; 
who can draw important conclusions from 
circumstances that commonly pass unob- 
served ; who judges with the greatest saga- 
city of the designs of other men, and the 
consequences of his own actions. To this 
superiority of understanding we give the 
name of genius, and look up with admira- 
tion to everything that bears the marks of it. 

Yet this power, so highly valuable in it- 
self, and so useful in the conduct of life, 
may be misapplied ; and men of genius, in 
all ages, have been prone to apply it to pur- 
poses for which it is altogether incompe- 
tent. 

The works of men and the works of 
Nature are not of the same order. The 
force of genius may enable a man perfectly 
to comprehend the former, and see them to 
the bottom. What is contrived and exe- 
cuted by one man may be perfectly under- 
stood by another man. With great proba- 
bility, he may from a part conjecture the 
whole, or from the effects may conjecture 
the causes ; because they are effects of a 
wisdom not superior to his own. [662] 

But the works of Nature are contrived 
and executed by a wisdom and power in- 
finitely superior to that of man ; and when 
men attempt, by the force of genius, to dis- 
cover the causes of the phsenomena of Na- 
ture, they have only the chance of going 
wrong more ingeniously. Their conjectures 
may appear very probable to beings no 
wiser than themselves ; but they have no 
chance to hit the truth. They are like the 
conjectures of a child how a ship of war is 
built, and how it is managed at sea. 

Let the man of genius try to make an 
animal, even the meanest ; to make a plant, 
or even a single leaf of a plant, or a feather 
of a bird ; he will find that all his wisdom 
and sagacity can bear no comparison with 
the wisdom of Nature, nor his power with 
the power of Nature. 



The experience of all ages shews how 
prone ingenious men have been to invent 
hypotheses to explain the phsenomena of 
Nature ; how fond, by a kind of anticipa- 
tion, to discover her secrets. Instead of a 
slow and gradual ascent in the scale of na- 
tural causes, by a just and copious induc- 
tion, they would shorten the work, and, by 
a flight of genius, get to the top at once. 
This gratifies the pride of human under- 
standing ; but it is an attempt beyond our 
force, like that of Phaeton to guide the 
chariot of the sun. 

When a man has laid out all his inge- 
nuity in fabricating a system, he views it 
with the eye of a parent ; he strains phse- 
nomena to make them tally with it, and 
make it look like the work of Nature. 

The slow and patient method of induc- 
tion, the only way to attain any knowledge 
of Nature's work, was little understood 
untd it was delineated by Lord Bacon, and 
has been little followed since. It humbles 
the pride of man, and puts him constantly in 
mind that his most ingenious conjectures 
with regard to the works of God are pitiful 
and childish. [663] 

There is no room here for the favourite 
talent of invention. In the humble method 
of information, from the great volume of 
Nature Ave must receive all our knowledge 
of Nature. Whatever is beyond a just in- 
terpretation of that volume is the work of 
man ; and the work of God ought not to be 
contaminated by any mixture with it. 

To a man of genius, self-denial is a diffi- 
cult lesson in philosophy as well as in reli- 
gion. To bring his fine imaginations and 
most ingenious conjectures to the fiery trial 
of experiment and induction, by which the 
greater part, if not the whole, will' be 
found to be dross, is a humiliating task. 
This is to condemn him to dig in a mine, 
when he would fly -with the wings of an 
eagle. 

In all the fine arts, whose end is to 
please, genius is deservedly supreme. In 
the conduct of human affairs, it often does 
wonders ; but in all inquiries into the con- 
stitution of Nature, it must act a subor- 
dinate part, ill-suited to the superiority it 
boasts. It may combine, but it must not 
fabricate. It may collect evidence, but 
must not supply the want of it by conjec- 
ture. It may display its powers by putting 
Nature to the question in well-contrived 
experiments, but it must add nothing to her 
answers. 

5. In avoiding one extreme, men are very 
apt to rush into the opposite. 

Thus, in rude ages, men, unaccustomed 
to search for natural causes, ascribe every 
uncommon appearance to the immediate 
interposition of invisible beings ; but when 
philosophv has discovered natural causes of 
[661-OGS] 



chap viii.] OF PREJUDICES, THE CAUSES OF ERROR. 



473 



many events, which, in the days of ignor- 
ance, were ascribed to the immediate opera- 
tion of gods or daemons, they are apt to 
think that all the phenomena of Nature 
may be accounted for in the same way. and 
that there is no need of an invisible Maker 
and Governor of the world. [664] 

Rude men are, at first, disposed to ascribe 
intelligence and active power to everything 
they see move or undergo any change. 
" Savages," says the Abbe Raynal, " where- 
ever they see motion which they cannot 
account for, there they suppose a soul." 
When they come to be convinced of the 
folly of this extreme, they are apt to run 
into the opposite, and to think that every 
thing moves only as it is moved, and acts 
as it is acted upon. 

Thus, from the extreme of superstition, 
the transition is easy to that of atheism ; 
and from the extreme of ascribing activity 
to every part of Nature, to that of exclud- 
ing it altogether, and making even the deter- 
minations of intelligent beings, the links of 
one fatal chain, or the wheels of one great 
machine. 

The abuse of occult qualities in the Peri- 
patetic philosophy led Des Cartes and his 
followers to reject all occult qualities, to 
pretend to explain all the phenomena of 
Nature by mere matter and motion, and 
even to fix disgrace upon the name of occult 
quality. 

6. Men's judgments are often perverted 
oy their affections and passions. This is 
so commonly observed, and so universally 
acknowledged, that it needs no proof nor 
illustration. 

B. The second class of idols in Lord 
Bacon's division are the idola specus. 

These are p.ejudices which have their 
origin, not from the constitution of human 
nature, but from some thing peculiar to the 
individual. 

As in a cave objects vary in their appear- 
ance according to the form of the cave and 
the manner in which it receives the light. 
Lord Bacon conceives the mind of every 
man to resemble a cave, which has its par- 
ticular form, and its particular manner of 
being enlightened ; and, from these circum- 
stances, often gives false colours and a delu- 
sive appearance to objects seen in it. * [665] 

For this'reason he gives the name oi idola 
specus to those prejudices which arise from 
the particular way in which a man has been 
trained,, from his being addicted to some 
particular profession, or from something 
particular in the turn of his mind. 

A man whose thoughts have been con- 



* If Bacon took- his similcof the cave.from Plato, 
lie has perverted it Irom its proper meaning; for, in 
the Platon : c signification, the- idola specus should 
denote the prejudices. of the species, and not of the 
individual — that is, expre-s what Bacon denominates 
by idola trilnts.— H . 



[661-666] 



fined to a certain track by his profession or 
manner of life, is very apt to judge wrong 
when he ventures out of that track. He is 
apt to draw everything within the sphere of 
his profession, and to judge by its maxims 
of things that have no relation to it. 

The mere mathematician is apt to apply 
measure and calculation to things which do 
not admit of it. Direct and inverse ratios 
have been applied by an ingenious author to 
measure human affections, and the moral 
worth of actions. An eminent mathemati- 
cian* attempted to ascertain by calculation 
the ratio in which the evidence of facts 
must decrease in the course- of time, and 
fixed the period when the evidence of the 
facts on which Christianity is founded shall 
become evanescent, and when in conse- 
quence no faith shall be found on the earth. 
1 have seen a philosophical dissertation, 
published by a very good mathematician, 
wherein, in opposition to the ancient divi- 
sion of things into ten categories, he main- 
tains that there arc no more, and can be no 
more than two categories, to wit, data and 
qacesita.-f 

The ancient chemists were wont to ex- 
plain all the mysteries of Nature, and even 
of religion, by salt, sulphur, and mercury. 

Mr Locke, I think, mentions an eminent 
musician, who believed that God created 
the world in six days, and rested the se- 
venth, because there are but seven notes in 
music. I knew one of that profession, who 
thought that there could be only three parts 
in harmony — to wit, bass, tenor, and treble 
— because there are but three persons in the 
Trinity. [666] 

The learned and ingenious Dr Henry 
More having very elaborately and methodi- 
cally compiled his " Enchirid'mm Metaphy- 
sician," and " Enchiridium Eihicum" 
found all the divisions and subdivisions of 
both to be allegorically taught in the first 
chapter of Genesis. Thus even very inge- 
nious men are apt to make a ridiculous 
figure, by drawing into the track in which 
their thoughts have long run, things alto- 
gether foreign to it. J 

Different persons, either from temper or 
from education, have different tendencies of 
understanding, which, by their excess, are 
unfavourable to sound judgment. 

Some have an undue admiration of anti- 
quity, and contempt of whatever is modern ; 
others go as far into the contrary extreme. 
It may be judged, that the former. are per- 

* Craig.— H. 

t Reid refers to his uncle, James Gregory, Profes- 
sor of Mathematics in St Andrew's and Edinburgh. 
See above, p. 6S, b. . — H. 
% " Musicians think our souls are harmonies ; 
Physicians held that they complexions he 
Epicures make them swarms of atomies, 
Which do by chance into the body flee. 
Sir John Davies, in the first and second lints, al 
ludes to Aristoxcnus and Cialen.— H. 



474 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VI. 



sons who value themselves upon their ac- 
quaintance with ancient authors, and the 
latter such as have little knowledge of this 
kind. 

Some are afraid to venture a step out of the 
beaten track, and think it safest to go with 
the multitude ; others are fond of singulari- 
ties, and of everything that has the air of 
paradox. 

Some are desultory and changeable in 
their opinions ; others unduly tenacious. 
Most men have a predilection for the tenets 
of their sect or party, and still more for 
their own inventions. 

C. The idolafori are the fallacies arising 
from the imperfections and the abuse of lan- 
guage, which is an instrument of thought 
as well as of the communication of our 
thoughts. [667] 

Whether it be the effect of constitution 
or of habit, I will not take upon me to de- 
termine ; but, .from one or both of these 
causes, it happens that no man can pursue 
a train of thought or reasoning without the 
use of language. Words are the signs of 
our thoughts ; and the sign is so associated 
with the thing signified, that the last can 
hardly present itself to the imagination, 
without drawing the other along with it. 

A man who would compose in any lan- 
guage must think in that language. If he 
thinks in one language what he would ex- 
press in another, he thereby doubles his 
labour ; and, after all, his expressions will 
have more the air of a translation than of 
an original. 

This shews that our thoughts take their 
colour in some degree from the language 
we use ; and that, although language ought 
always to be subservient to thought, yet 
thought must be, at some times and in some 
degree, subservient to language. 

As a servant that is extremely useful and 
necessary to his master, by degrees acquires 
an authority over him, so that the master 
must often yield to the servant, such is the 
case with regard to language. Its inten- 
tion is to be a servant to the understanding ; 
but it is so useful and so necessary that we 
cannot avoid being sometimes led by it when 
it ought to follow. We cannot shake off 
this impediment — we must drag it along 
with us ; and, therefore, must direct our 
course, and regulate our pace, as it permits. 

Language must have many imperfections 
when applied to philosophy, because it was 
not made for that use. In the early periods 
of society, rude and ignorant men use cer- 
tain forms of speech, to express their wants, 
their desires, and their transactions with 
one another. Their language can reach no 
farther than their speculations and notions ; 
and, if their notions be vague and ill-defined, 
the words by which they express them must 
be so likewise. 



It was a grand and noble project of 
Bishop Wilkins* to invent a philosophical 
language, which should be free from the 
imperfections of vulgar languages. Whether 
this attempt will ever succeed, so far as to 
be generally useful, I shall not pretend to 
determine. The great pains taken by that 
excellent man in this design have hitherto 
produced no effect. Very few have ever 
entered minutely into his views ; far less 
have his philosophical language and his real 
character been brought into use. [668] 

He founds his philosophical language and 
real character upon a systematical division 
and subdivision of all the things which may 
be expressed by language ; and, instead of 
the ancient division into ten categories, has 
made forty categories, or summa genera. 
But whether this division, though made by 
a very comprehensive mind, will always suit 
the various systems that may be introduced, 
and all the real improvements that may be 
made in human knowledge, may be doubted. 
The difficulty is still greater in the sub- 
divisions ; so that it is to be feared that 
this noble attempt of a great genius will 
prove abortive, until philosophers have the 
same opinions and the same systems in the 
various branches of human knowledge. 

There is more reason to hope that the 
languages used by philosophers may be 
gradually improved in copiousness and in 
distinctness ; and that improvements in 
knowledge and in language may go hand in 
hand and facilitate each other. But I fear 
the imperfections of language can never be 
perfectly remedied while our knowledge *.is 
imperfect. 

However this may be, it is evident that 
the imperfections of language, and much 
more the abuse of it, are the occasion of 
many errors ; and that in many disputes 
which have engaged learned men, the differ- 
ence has been partly, and in some wholly, 
about the meaning of words, 

Mr Locke found it necessary to employ a 
fourth part of his " Essay on Human Un- 
derstanding" about words, their various 
kinds, their imperfection and abuse, and 
the remedies of both ; and has made many 
observations upon these subjects well worthy 
of attentive perusal. [669] 

D. The fourth class of prejudices are the 
idola theatri, by which are meant prejudices 
arising from the systems or sects in which 
we have been trained, or which we have 
adopted. 

A false system once fixed in the mind, 
becomes, as it were, the medium through 
which we see objects : they receive a tinc- 
ture from it, and appear of another colour 
than when seen by a pure light. 

Upon the same subject, a Platonist, a 



* See above, p. 403, note.— H. 

[667-669 



chap. viii.] OF PREJUDICES, THE CAUSES OF ERROR. 



475 



Peripatetic, and an Epicurean, will think 
differently, not only in matters connected 
with his peculiar tenets, but even in things 
remote from them. 

A judicious history of the different sects 
of philosophers, and the different methods of 
philosophising, which have obtained among 
mankind, would be of no small use to direct 
men in the search of truth. In such a 
history, what would be of the greatest mo- 
ment is not so much a minute detail of the 
dogmata of each sect, as a just delineation 
of the spirit of the sect, and of that point 
of view in which things appeared to its 
founder. This was perfectly understood, 
and, as far as concerns the theories of mo- 
rals, is executed with great judgment and 
candour by Dr Smith in his theory of moral 
sentiments. 

As there are certaiD temperaments of the 
body that dispose a man more to one class 
of diseases than to another, and, on the 



other hand, diseases of that kind, when they 
happen by accident, are apt to induce the 
temperament that is suited to them — there 
is something analogous to this in the dis- 
eases of the understanding. [670] 

A certain complexion of understanding 
may dispose a man to one system of opinions 
more than to another ; and, on the other 
hand, a system of opinions, fixed in the mind 
by education or otherwise, gives that com- 
plexion to the understanding which is suited 
to them. 

It were to be wished, that the different 
systems that have prevailed could be classed 
according to their spirit, as well as named 
from their founders. Lord Bacon has dis- 
tinguished false philosophy into the sophis- 
tical, the empirical, and the superstitious, 
and has made judicious observations upon 
each of these kinds. But I apprehend this sub- 
ject deserves to be treated more fully by such 
a hand, if such a hand can be found. [671 ] 



ESSAY VII 



OF REASONING. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF REASONING IN' GENERAL, AND OF 
DEMONSTRATION. 

The power of reasoning is very nearly 
allied to that of judging ; and it is of little 
consequence in the common affairs of life 
to distinguish them nicely. On this account, 
the same name is often given to both. We 
include both under the name of reason.* 
The assent we give to a proposition is called 
judgment, whether the proposition be self- 
evident, or derive its evidence by reasoning 
from other propositions. 

Yet there is a distinction between rea- 
soning and judging. Reasoning is the pro- 
cess by which we pass from one judgment 
to another, which is the consequence of it. 
Accordingly our judgments are distinguished 
into intuitive, which are not grounded upon 
any preceding judgment, and discursive, 
which are deduced from some preceding 
judgment by reasoning. 

In all reasoning, therefore, there must be 
a proposition inferred, and one or more from 
which it is inferred. And this power of 
inferring, or drawing a conclusion, is only 
another name for reasoning ; the proposi- 
tion inferred being called the conclusion, 



* See Stewart's 
[670-672] 



Elements," ii. p. 12.'— H. 



and the proposition or propositions from 
which it is inferred, the premises. [672] 

Reasoning may consist of many steps ; 
the first conclusion being a premise to a 
second, that to a third, and so on, till we. 
come to the last conclusion. A process 
consisting of many steps of this kind, is so 
easily distinguished from judgment, that it 
is never called by that name. But when 
there is only a single step to the conclusion, 
the distinction is less obvious, and the pro- 
cess is sometimes called judgment, some- 
times reasoning. 

It is not strange that, in common dis- 
course, judgment and reasoning should not 
be very nicely distinguished, since they are 
in some cases confounded even by logicians. 
We are taught in logic, that judgment is 
expressed by one proposition, but that rea- 
soning requires two or three. But so 
various are the modes of speech, that what 
in one mode is expressed by two or three 
propositions, may, in another mode, be ex- 
pressed by one. Thus I may say, God is 
pood ; therefore good men shall be happy. 
This is reasoning, of that kind which logi- 
cians call an enthymeme, consisting of an 
antecedent proposition, and a conclusion 
drawn from it.* But this reasoning may 

* Theenthymeuieisamere abbreviation of expres- 
sion; in the mental process there is no ellipsis. By 



476 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VII. 



be expressed by one proposition, thus : — 
Because God is good, good men shall be 
happy. This is what they call a causal 
proposition, and therefore expresses judg- 
ment ; yet the enthyraeme, which is reason- 
ing, expresses no more. 

Reasoning, as well as judgment, must be 
true or false : both are grounded upon evi- 
dence which may be probable or demonstra- 
tive, and both are accompanied with assent 
or belief. [673] 

The power of reasoning is justly accounted 
one of the prerogatives of human nature ; 
because by it many important truths have 
been and may be discovered, which with- 
out it would be beyond our reach ; yet it 
seems to be only a kind of crutch to a 
limited understanding. We can conceive 
an understanding, superior to human, to 
which that truth appears intuitively, which 
we can only discover by reasoning. For 
this cause, though we must ascribe judg- 
ment to the Almighty, we do not ascribe 
reasoning to him, because it implies some 
defect or limitation of understanding. Even 
among men, to use reasoning in things that 
are self-evident, is trifling ; like a man 
going upon crutches when he can walk 
upon his legs. 

What reasoning is, can be understood 
only by a man who has reasoned, and who 
is capable of reflecting upon this operation 
of his own mind- We can define it only by 
synonymous words or phrases, such as in- 
ferring, drawing a conclusion, and the like. 
The very notion of reasoning, therefore, can 
enter into the mind by no other channel 
than that of reflecting upon the operation 
of reasoning in our own minds ; and the 
notions of premises and conclusion, of a 
syllogism and all its constituent parts, of 
an enthymeme, sorites, demonstration, pa- 
ralogism, and many others, have the same 
origin. 

It is nature, undoubtedly, that gives us 
the capacity of reasoning. When this is 
wanting, no art nor education can supply it. 
But this capacity may be dormant through 
life, like the seed of a plant, which, for want 
of heat and moisture, never vegetates- This 
is probably the case of some savages. 

Although the capacity be purely the gift 
of nature, and probably given in very dif- 
ferent degrees to different persons ; yet the 
power of reasoning seems to be got by habit, 
as much as the power of walking or running. 
Its first exertions we are not able to recol- 
lect in ourselves, or clearly to discern in 
others. They are very feeble, and need to 
be led by example, and supported by autho- 
rity. By degrees it acquires strength, 
chiefly by means of imitation and exer- 
cise. [674] 

enthymeme, Aristotle also meant something very dif- 
ferent trom what is vulgarly supposed.— H. 



The exercise of reasoning on various sub- 
jects not only strengthens the faculty, but 
furnishes the mind with a store of materials. 
Every train of reasoning, which is familiar, 
becomes a beaten track in the way to many 
others. It removes many obstacles which 
lay in our way, and smooths many roads 
which we may have occasion to travel in 
future disquisitions. 

When men of equal natural parts apply 
their reasoning power to any subject, the 
man who has reasoned much on the same 
or on similar subjects, has a like advantage 
over him who has not, as the mechanic 
who has store of tools for his work, has of 
him who has his tools to make, or even to 
invent. 

In a train of reasoning, the evidence of 
every step, where nothing is left to be sup- 
plied by the reader or hearer, must be im- 
mediately discernible to every man of ripe 
understanding who has a distinct compre- 
hension of the premises and conclusion, and 
who compares them together. To be able 
to comprehend, in one view, a combination 
of steps of this kind, is more difficult, and 
seems to require a superior natural ability. 
In all, it may~be much improved by habit. 

But the highest talent in reasoning is the 
invention of proofs; by which, truths re- 
mote from the premises are brought to light. 
In all works of understanding, invention 
has the highest praise : it requires an ex- 
tensive view of what relates to the subject, 
and a quickness in discerning those affinities 
and relations which may be subservient to 
the purpose. 

In all invention there must be some end 
in view : and sagacity in finding out the 
road that leads to this end, is, I think, what 
we call invention. In this chiefly, as I ap- 
prehend, and in clear and distinct concep- 
tions, consists that superiority of under- 
standing which we call genius. [675] 

In every chain of reasoning, the evidence 
of the last conclusion can be no greater than 
that of the weakest link of the chain, what- 
ever may be the strength of the rest. 

The most remarkable distinction of rea- 
sonings is, that some are probable, others 
demonstrative. 

In every step of demonstrative reason- 
ing, the inference is necessary, and we per- 
ceive it to be impossible that the conclusion 
should not follow from the premises. In 
probable reasoning, the connection between 
the premises and the conclusion is not neces- 
sary, nor do we perceive it to be impossible 
that the first should be true while the last 
is false. 

Hence, demonstrative reasoning has no 
degrees, nor can one demonstration be 
stronger than another, though, in relation 
to our faculties, one may be more easily 
comprehended than another. Every de- 
[673-675] 



chap, i.] OF REASONING, AND OF DEMONSTRATION. 



477 



monstration gives equal strength to the con- 
clusion, and' leaves no possibility of its being 
false. 

It was, I think, the opinion of all the 
ancients, that demonstrative reasoning can 
be applied only to truths that are necessary, 
and not to those that are contingent. In 
this, I believe, they judged right. Of all 
created things, the existence, the attributes, 
and, consequently, the relations resulting 
from those attributes, are contingent. They 
depend upon the will and power of Him who 
made them. These are matters of fact, and 
admit not of demonstration. 

The field of demonstrative reasoning, 
therefore, is the various relations of things 
abstract, that is, of things which we con- 
ceive, without regard to their existence. 
Of these, as they are conceived by the mind, 
and are nothing but what they are conceived 
to be, we may have a clear and adequate 
comprehension. Their relations and attri- 
butes are necessary and immutable. They 
are the things to which the Pythagoreans 
and Platonists gave the name of ideas. I 
would beg leave to borrow this meaning of 
the word idra from those ancient philoso- 
phers, and then I must agree with them, 
that ideas are the only objects about which 
we can reason demonstratively. [676] 

There are many even of our ideas about 
which we can carry on no considerable train 
of reasoning. Though they be ever so well 
defined and perfectly comprehended, yet 
their agreements and disagreements are few, 
and these are discerned at once. We may 
go a step or two in forming a conclusion 
with regard to such objects, but can go no 
farther. There are others, about which we 
may, by a long train of demonstrative rea- 
soning, arrive at conclusions very remote 
and unexpected. 

The reasonings I have met with that can 
be called strictly demonstrative, may, I 
think, be reduced to two classes. They are 
either metaphysical, or they are mathe- 
matical. 

In metaphysical reasoning, the process is 
always short. The conclusion is but a step 
or two, seldom more, from the first principle 
or axiom on which it is grounded, and the 
different conclusions depend not one upon 
another. 

It is otherwise in mathematical reason- 
ing. Here the field has no limits. One 
proposition leads on to another, that to a 
third, and so on without end. 

If it should be asked, why demonstrative 
reasoning has so wide a field in mathema- 
tics, while, in other abstract subjects, it is 
confined within very narrow limits, I con- 
ceive this is chiefly owing to the nature of 
quantity, the object of mathematics. 

Every quantity, as it has magnitude, and 
is divisible into parts without end, so, in 
[676-678] 



respect of its magnitude, it has a certain 
ratio to every quantity of the kind. The 
ratios of quantities are innumerable, such 
as, a half, a third, a tenth, double, triple. 
[677] All the powers of number are in- 
sufficient to express the variety of ratios. 
For there are innumerable ratios which 
cannot be perfectly expressed by numbers, 
such as, the ratio of the side to the diagonal 
of a square, or of the circumference of a circle 
to the diameter. Of this infinite variety of 
ratios, every one may be clearly conceived 
and distinctly expressed, so as to be in no 
danger of being mistaken for any other. 

Extended quantities, such as lines, sur- 
faces, solids, besides the variety of relations 
they have in respect of magnitude, have no 
less variety in respect of figure ; and every 
mathematical figure may be accurately 
defined, so as to distinguish it from all 
others. 

There is nothing of this kind in other 
objects of abstract reasoning. Some of 
them have various degrees ; but these are 
not capable of measure, nor can be said to 
have an assignable ratio to others of the 
kind. They are either simple, or com- 
pounded of a few indivisible parts ; and 
therefore, if we may be allowed the expres- 
sion, can touch only in few points. But 
mathematical quantities being made up of 
parts without number, can touch in innu- 
merable points, and be compared in innu- 
merable different ways. 

There have been attempts made to mea- 
sure the merit of actions by the ratios of 
the affections and principles of action from 
which they proceed. 'This may perhaps, 
in the way of analogy, serve to illustrate 
what was before known ; but I do not think 
any truth can be discovered in this way. 
There are, no doubt, degrees of benevolence, 
self-love, and other affections ; but, when 
we apply ratios to them, I apprehend we 
have no distinct meaning. 

Some demonstrations are called direct, 
others indirect. The first kind leads directly 
to the conclusion to be proved. Of the 
indirect, some are called demonstrations ad 
absurd 'um. In these, the proposition con- 
tradictory to that which is to be proved is 
demonstrated to be false, or to lead to an 
absurdity ; whence it follows, that its con- 
tradictory — that is, the proposition to be 
proved — is true. This inference is grounded 
upon an axiom in logic, that of two contra- 
dictory propositions, if one be false, the 
other must be true.* [678] 

Another kind of indirect demonstration 
proceeds by enumerating all the supposi- 
tions that can possibly be made concerning 
the proposition to be proved, and then 



* This is called the principle of Excluded Middle— 
riz., between two contradictories. — H 



478 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[_ESSAY VII. 



demonstrating that all of them, excepting 
that which is to be proved, are false ; whence 
it follows, that the excepted supposition is 
true. Thus, one line is proved to be equal 
to another, by proving first that it cannot be 
greater, and then that it cannot be less : for 
it must be either greater, or less, or equal ; 
and two of these suppositions being demon- 
strated to be false, the third must be true. 

All these kinds of demonstration are used 
in mathematics, and perhaps some others. 
They have all equal strength. The direct 
demonstration is preferred where it can be 
had, for this reason only, as I apprehend, 
because it is the shortest road to the con- 
clusion. The nature of the evidence, and 
its strength, is the same in all : ouly we 
are conducted to it by different roads. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHETHER MORALITY BE CAPABLE OF 
DEMONSTRATION. 

What has been said of demonstrative 
reasoning, may help us to judge of an opi- 
nion of Mr Locke, advanced in several places 
of his Essay — to wit, " That morality is 
capable of demonstration as well as mathe- 
matics." 

In book III., chap. 11, having observed 
that mixed modes, especially thcfee belong- 
ing to morality, being such combinations of 
ideas as the mind puts together of its own 
choice, the signification of their names 
may be perfectly and exactly defined, he 
adds— [679] 

Sect. 16. " Upon this ground it is that I 
am bold to think that morality is capable of 
demonstration as well as mathematics ; since 
the precise real essence of the things moral 
words stand for may be perfectly known, 
and so the congruity or incongruity of the 
things themselves be certainly discovered, 
in which consists perfect knowledge. Nor 
let any one object, That the names of sub- 
stances are often to be made use of in mo- 
rality, as well as those of modes, from 
which will arise obscurity ; for, as to sub- 
stances, when concerned in moral dis- 
courses, their divers natures are not so 
much inquired into as supposed : v. g. When 
we say that man is subject to law, we mean 
nothing by man but a corporeal rational 
creature : what the real essence or other 
qualities of that creature are, in this case, 
is no way considered." 

Again, in book IV., ch. in., § 18 : — " The 
idea of a Supreme Being, whose workman- 
ship we are, and the idea of ourselves, being 
such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, 
if duly considered and pursued, afford such 
foundation of our duty and rules of action 
as might place morality among the sciences 



capable of demonstration. The relation of 
other modes may certainly be perceived, as 
well as those of number and extension ; and 
I cannot see why they should not be cap- 
able of demonstration, if due methods were 
thought on to examine or pursue their 
agreement or disagreement." 

He afterwards gives, as instances, two 
propositions, as moral propositions of which 
we may be as certain as of any in mathe- 
matics ; and considers at large what may 
have given the advantage to the ideas of 
quantity, and made them be thought more 
capable of certainty and demonstration. [ 680 ] 

Again, in the 12th chapter of the same 
book, § 7, 8 : — " This, I think, I may say, 
that, if other ideas that are the real as we'll 
as nominal essences of their several species 
were pursued in the way familiar to mathe- 
maticians, they would carry our thoughts 
farther, and with greater evidence and 
clearness, than possibly we are apt to ima- 
gine. This gave me the confidence to 
advance that conjecture which I suggest, 

chap iii viz., That morality is capable of 

demonstration as well as mathematics." 

From these passages, it appears that this 
opinion was not a transient thought, but 
what he had revolved in his mind on dif- 
ferent occasions. He offers his reasons for 
it, illustrates it by examples, and considers 
at length the causes that have led men to 
think mathematics more capable of demon- 
stration than the principles of morals. 

Some of his learned correspondents, par- 
ticularly his friend Mr Molyneux, urged 
and importuned him to compose a system 
of morals according to the idea he had ad- 
vanced in his Essay ; and, in his answer to 
these solicitations, he only pleads other oc- 
cupations, without suggesting any change of 
his opinion, or any great difficulty in the 
execution of what was desired. 

The reason he gives for this opinion is 
ingenious ; and his regard for virtue, the 
highest prerogative of the human species, 
made him fond of an opinion which seemed 
to be favourable to virtue, and to have a 
just foundation in reason. 

We need not, however, be afraid that the 
interest of virtue may suffer by a free and 
candid examination of this question, or in- 
deed of any question whatever. For the 
interests of truth and of virtue can never 
be found in opposition. Darkness and error 
may befriend vice, but can never be favour- 
able to virtue. [681] 

Those philosophers who think that our 
determinations in morals are not real judg- 
ments — that right and wrong in human con- 
duct are only certain feelings or sensations 
in the person who contemplates the action 
— must reject Mr Locke's opinion without 
examination. For, if the principles of mo- 
rals be not a matter of judgment, but of 
[679-681] 



chap, ii.] WHETHER MORALITY BE DEMONSTRABLE. 



479 



feeling only, there can be no demonstration 
of them ; nor can any other reason be given 
for them, but that men are so constituted 
by the Author of their being as to contem- 
plate with pleasure the actions we call vir- 
tuous, and with disgust those we call vicious. 

It is not, therefore, to be expected that 
the philosophers of this class should think 
this opinion of Mr Locke worthy of ex- 
amination, since it is founded upon what 
they think a false hypothesis. But if our 
determinations in morality be real judg- 
ments, and, like all other judgments, be 
either true or false, it is not unimportant 
to understand upon what kind of evidence 
those judgments rest. 

The argument offered by Mr Locke, 
to shew that morality is capable of demon- 
stration, is, " That the precise real essence 
of the things moral words stand for, may be 
perfectly known, and so the congruity or 
incongruity of the things themselves be 
perfectly discovered, in -which consists per- 
fect knowledge." 

. It is true, that the field of demonstration 
is the various relations of things conceived 
abstractly, of which we may have perfect 
and adequate conceptions. And Mr Locke, 
taking all the things which moral words 
stand for to be of this kind, concluded that 
morality is as capable of demonstration as 
mathematics. 

I acknowledge that the names of the 
virtues and vices, of right and obligation, 
of liberty and property, stand for things 
abstract, which may be accurately denned, 
or, at least, conceived as distinctly and 
adequatelyas mathematical quantities. And 
thence, indeed, it follows, that their mutual 
relations may be perceived as clearly and 
certainly as mathematical truths. [682] 

Of this Mr Locke gives two pertinent 
examples. The first — " Where there is no 
property, there is no injustice, is," says he, 
" a proposition as certain as any demon- 
stration in Euclid." 

When injustice is defined to be a viola- 
tion of property, it is as necessary a truth, 
that there can be no injustice where there 
is no property, as that you cannot take 
from a man that which he has not. 

The second example is, " That no 
government allows absolute liberty." This 
is a truth no less certain and necessary. 

Such abstract truths I would call meta- 
physical rather than moral. We give the 
name of mathematical to truths that ex- 
press the relations of quantities considered 
abstractly ; all other abstract truths may 
be called metaphysical. But if those men- 
tioned by Mr Locke are to be called moral 
truths, I agree with him that there are 
many such that are necessarily true, and 
that have all the evidence that mathemati- 
cal truths can have. 
f682, 683] 



It ought, however, to be remembered, 
that, as was before observed, the relations 
of things abstract, perceivable by us, ex- 
cepting those of mathematical quantities, 
are few, and, for the most part, immediately 
discerned, so as not to require that train 
of reasoning which we call demonstration. 
Their evidence resembles more that of 
mathematical axioms than mathematical 
propositions. 

This appears in the two propositions 
given as examples by Mr Locke. The first 
follows immediately from the definition of 
injustice ; the second from the definition of 
government. Their evidence may more 
properly be called intuitive than demon- 
strative. And this I apprehend to be the 
case, or nearly the case, of all abstract 
truths that are not mathematical, for the 
reason given in the last chapter. [683] 

The propositions which I think are pro- 
perly called moral, are those that affirm 
some moral obligation to be, or not to be 
incumbent on one or more individual per- 
sons. To such propositions, Mr Locke's 
reasoning does not apply, because the sub- 
jects of the proposition are not things whose 
real essence may be perfectly known. They 
are the creatures of God ; their obligation 
results from the constitution which God 
hath given them, and the circumstances 
in which he hath placed them. That an 
individual hath such a constitution, and is 
placed in such circumstances, is not an 
abstract and necessary, but a contingent 
truth. It is a matter of fact, and, there- 
fore, not capable of demonstrative evidence, 
which belongs only to necessary truths. 

The evidence which every man hath of 
his own existence, though it be irresistible, 
is not demonstrative. And the same thing 
may be said of the evidence which every 
man hath, that he is a moral agent, and 
under certain moral obligations. In like 
manner, the evidence we have of the exist- 
ence of other men, is not demonstrative ; 
nor is the evidence we have of their being 
endowed with those faculties which make 
them moral and accountable agents. 

If man had not the faculty given him by 
God of perceiving certain things in conduct 
to be right, and others to be wrong, and of 
perceiving his obligation to do what is right, 
and not to do what is wrong, he would not 
be a moral and accountable being. 

If man be endowed with such a faculty, 
there must be some things which, by this 
faculty, are immediately discerned to be 
right, and others to be wrong ; and, there- 
fore, there must be in morals, as in other 
sciences, first principles which do not de- 
rive their evidence from any antecedent 
principles, but may be said to be intuitively 
discerned. 

Moral truths, therefore, may be divided 



480 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VII. 



into two classes — to wit, such as are self- 
evident to every man whose understanding 
and moral faculty are ripe, and such as are 
deduced by reasoning from those that are 
self-evident. If the first be not discerned 
without reasoning, the last never can be so 
by any reasoning. [684] 

If any man could say, with sincerity, that 
he is conscious of no obligation to consult 
his own present and future happiness ; to 
be faithful to his engagements ; to obey his 
Maker ; to injure no man ; I know not 
what reasoning, either probable or demon- 
strative, I could use to convince him of any 
moral duty. As you cannot reason in 
mathematics with a man who denies the 
axioms, as little can you reason with a man 
in morals who denies the first principles of 
morals. The man who does not, by the light 
of his own mind, perceive some things in 
conduct to be right, and others to be wrong, 
is as incapable of reasoning about morals 
as a blind man is about colours. Such a 
man, if any such man ever wa«, would be 
no moral agent, nor capable of any moral 
obligation. 

Some first principles of morals must be 
immediately discerned, otherwise we have 
no foundation on which others can rest, or 
from which we can reason. 

Every man knows certainly, that, what he 
approves in other men, he ought to do in 
like circumstances, and that he ought not to 
do what he condemns in other men. Every 
man knows that he ought, with candour, to 
use the best means of knowing his duty. 
To every man who has a conscience, these 
things are self-evident. They are imme- 
diate dictates of our moral faculty, which is 
a part of the human constitution ; and every 
man condemns himself, whether he w r ill or 
not, when he knowingly acts contrary to 
them. The evidence of these fundamental 
principles of morals, and of others that 
might be named, appears, therefore, to me 
to be intuitive rather than demonstrative. 

The man who acts according to the dic- 
tates of his conscience, and takes due pains 
to be rightly informed of his duty, is a per- 
fect man with regard to morals, and merits 
no blame, whatever may be the imperfec- 
tions or errors of his understanding. He 
who knowingly acts contrary to them, is 
conscious of guilt, and self-condemned. 
Every particular action that falls evidently 
within the fundamental rules of morals, is 
evidently his duty ; and it requires no rea- 
soning to convince him that it is so. [685] 

Thus, I think it appears, that every man 
of common understanding knows certainly, 
and without reasoning, the ultimate ends 
he ought to pursue, and that reasoning is 
necessary only to discover the most proper 
means of attaining them ; and in this, in- 
deed, a good man may often be in doubt. 



Thus, a magistrate knows that it is his 
duty to promote the good of the community 
which hath intrusted him with authority ; 
and to offer to prove this to him by reason- 
ing, would be to affront him. But whether 
such a scheme of conduct in his office, or 
another, may best serve that end, he may 
in many cases be doubtful. I believe, in 
such cases, he can very rarely have demon- 
strative evidence. His conscience deter- 
mines the end he ought to pursue, and he 
has intuitive evidence that his end is good ; 
but prudence must determine the means 
of attaining that end ; and prudence can 
very rarely use demonstrative reasoning, 
but must rest in what appears most proba- 
ble. 

I apprehend, that, in every kind of duty 
we owe to God or man, the case is similar — 
that is, that the obligation of the most 
general rules of duty is self-evident ; that 
the application of those rules to particular 
actions is often no less evident ; and that, 
when it is not evident, but requires reason- 
ing, that reasoning can very rarely be of 
the demonstrative, but must be of the pro- 
bable kind. Sometimes it depends upon 
the temper, and talents, and circumstances 
of the man himself; sometimes upon the 
character and circumstances of others ; 
sometimes upon both ; and these are things 
which admit not of demonstration. [686 J 

Every man is bound to employ the talents 
which God hath given him to the best pur- 
pose ; but if, through accidents which he 
could not foresee, or ignorance which was 
invincible, they be less usefully employed 
than they might have been, this will not be 
imputed to him by his righteous Judge. 

It is a common and a just observation, 
that the man of virtue plays a surer game 
in order to obtain his end than the man of 
the world. It is not, however, because he 
reasons better concerning the means of 
attaining his end ; for the children of this 
world are often wiser in their generation 
than the children of light. But the reason 
of the observation is, that involuntary 
errors, unforeseen accidents, and invincible 
ignorance, which affect deeply all the con- 
cerns of the present world, have no effect 
upon virtue or its reward. 

In the common occurrences of life, a man 
of integrity, who hath exercised his moral 
faculty in judging what is right and what 
is wrong, sees his duty without reasoning, 
as he sees the highway. The cases that 
require reasoning are few, compared with 
those that require none ; and a man may 
be_ very honest and virtuous who cannot 
reason, and who knows not what demon- 
stration means. 

The power of reasoning, in those that 

have it, may be abused in morals, as in 

other matters. To a man who uses it with 

[684-686] 



CHAP. III.] 



OF PROBABLE REASONING. 



481 



an upright heart, and a single eye to find 
what is his duty, it will be of great use ; 
but when it is used to justify what a man 
has a strong inclination to do, it will only 
serve to deceive himself and others. When 
a man can reason, his passions will reason, 
and they are the most cunning sophists we 
meet with. 

If the rules of virtue were left to be dis- 
covered by demonstrative reasoning, or by 
reasoning of any kind, sad would be the 
condition of the far greater part of men, 
who have not the means of cultivating the 
power of reasoning. As virtue is the busi- 
ness of all men, the first principles of it are 
written in their hearts, in characters so 
legible that no man can pretend ignorance 
of them, or of his obligation to practise 
them. [687] 

Some knowledge of duty and of moral 
obligation is necessary to all men. With- 
out it they could not be moral and account- 
able creatures, nor capable of being mem- 
bers of civil society. It may, therefore, 
be presumed that Nature has put this 
knowledge within the reach of all men. 
Reasoning and demonstration are weapons 
which the greatest part of mankind never 
was able to wield. The knowledge that is 
necessary to all, must be attainable by all. 
We see it is so in what pertains to the 
natural life of man. 

Some knowledge of things that are useful 
and things that are hurtful, is so necessary 
to all men, that without it the species would 
soon perish. But it is not by reasoning 
that this knowledge is got, far less by de- 
monstrative reasoning. It is by our senses, 
by memory, by experience, by information ; 
means of knowledge that are open to all 
men, and put the learned and the unlearned, 
those who can reason and those who can- 
not, upon a level. 

It may, therefore, be expected, from the 
analogy of nature, that such a knowledge 
of morals as is necessary to all men should 
be had by means more suited to the abili- 
ties of all men than demonstrative reason- 
ing is. 

This, I apprehend, is in fact the case. 
When men's faculties are ripe, the first 
principles of morals, into which all moral 
reasoning may be resolved, are perceived 
intuitively, and in a manner more analogous 
to the perceptions of sense than to the con- 
clusions of demonstrative reasoning. [688] 

Upon the whole, I agree with Mr Locke, 
that propositions expressing the congruities 
and incongruities of things abstract, which 
moral words stand for, may have all the 
evidence of mathematical truths. But this 
is not peculiar to things which moral words 
stand for. It is common to abstract pro- 
positions of every kind. For instance, you 
cannot take from a man what he has not. 
[697-689] 



A man cannot be bound and perfectly free 
at the same time. I think no man will 
call these moral truths ; but they are neces- 
sary truths, and as evident as any in mathe- 
matics. Indeed, they are very nearly allied 
to the two which Mr Locke gives as in- 
stances of moral propositions capable of 
demonstration. Of such abstract proposi- 
tions, I think it may more properly be said 
that they have the evidence of mathemati- 
cal axioms, than that they are capable of 
demonstration. 

There are propositions of another kind, 
which alone deserve the name of moral pro- 
positions. They are such as affirm some- 
thing to be the duty of persons that really 
exist. These are not abstract propositions ; 
and, therefore, Mr Locke's reasoning does 
not apply to them. The truth Of all such 
propositions depends upon the constitution 
and circumstances of the persons to whom 
they are applied. 

Of such propositions, there are some that 
are self-evident to every man that has a 
conscience ; and these are the principles 
from which all moral reasoning must be 
drawn. They may be called the axioms of 
morals. But our reasoning from these 
axioms to any duty that is not self-evident 
can very rarely be demonstrative. Nor is this 
any detriment to the cause of virtue, because 
to act against what appears most probable 
in a matter of duty, is as real a trespass 
against the first principles of morality, as 
to act against demonstration ; and, because 
he who has but one talent in reasoning, and 
makes the proper use of it, shall be ac- 
cepted, as well as he to whom God has 
given ten. [689] 



CHAPTER III. 

OF PROBABLE REASONING. 

The field of demonstration, as has been 
observed, is necessary truth : the field of 
probable reasoning is contingent truth — not 
what necessarily must be at all times, but 
what is, or was, or shall be. 

No contingent truth is capable of strict 
demonstration ; but necessary truths may 
sometimes have probable evidence. 

Dr Wallis discovered many important 
mathematical truths, by that kind of induc- 
tion which draws a general conclusion from 
particular premises. This is not strict de- 
monstration, but, in some cases, gives as 
full conviction as demonstration itself ; and 
a man may be certain, that a truth is de- 
monstrable before it ever has been demon- 
strated. In other cases, a mathematical 
proposition may have such probable evi- 
dence from induction or analogy as en- 
courages the mathematician to investigate 
21 



482 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VII. 



its demonstration. But still the reasoning, 
proper to mathematical and other necessary 
truths, is demonstration ; and that which is 
proper to contingent truths, is probable 
reasoning. 

These two kinds of reasoning differ in 
other respects. In demonstrative reason- 
ing, one argument is as good as a thousand- 
One demonstration may be more elegant 
than another ; it may be more easily com- 
prehended, or it may be more subservient 
to some purpose beyond the present. On 
any of these accounts it may deserve a 
preference : but then it is sufficient by it- 
self ; it needs no aid from another ; it can 
receive none. To add more demonstrations 
of the same conclusion, would be a kind of 
tautology in reasoning ; because one de- 
monstration, clearly comprehended, gives 
all the evidence we are capable of receiv- 
ing. [690] 

The strength of probable reasoning, for 
the most part, depends not upon any one 
argument, but upon many, which unite 
their force, and lead to the same conclusion. 
Any one of them by itself would be insuf- 
ficient to convince ; but the whole taken 
together may have a force that is irresistible, 
so that to desire more evidence would be 
absurd. Would any man seek new argu- 
ments to prove that there were such persons 
as King Charles I. or Oliver Cromwell ? 

Such evidence may be compared to a rope 
made up of many slender filaments twisted 
together. The rope has strength more 
than sufficient to bear the stress laid upon 
it, though no one of the filaments of which 
it is composed would be sufficient for that 
purpose. 

It is a common observation, that it is 
unreasonable to require demonstration for 
things which do not admit of it. It is no 
less unreasonable to require reasoning of 
any kind for things which are known with- 
out reasoning. All reasoning must be 
grounded upon truths which are known 
without reasoning. In every branch of real 
knowledge there must be first principles 
whose truth is known intuitively, without 
reasoning, either probable or demonstrative. 
They are not grounded on reasoning, but 
all reasoning is grounded on them. It has 
been shewn, that there are first principles 
of necessary truths, and first principles of 
contingent truths. Demonstrative reason- 
ing is grounded upon the former, and pro- 
bable reasoning upon the latter. 

That we may not be embarrassed by the 
ambiguity of words, it is proper to observe, 
that there is a popular meaning of probable 
evidence, which ought not to be confounded 
with the philosophical meaning, above ex- 
plained. [691] 

In common language, probable evidence 
is considered as an inferior degree of evi- 



dence, and is opposed to certainty : so that 
what is certain is more than probable, and 
what is only probable is not certain. Phi- 
losophers consider probable evidence, not 
as a degree, but as a species of evidence, 
which is opposed, not to certainty, but to 
another species of evidence, called demon- 
stration. 

Demonstrative evidence has no degrees ; 
but probable evidence, taken in the philo- 
sophical sense, has all degrees, from the 
very least to the greatest, which we call 
certainty. 

That there is such a city as Rome, I am 
as certain as of any proposition in Euclid ; 
but the evidence is not demonstrative, but 
of that kind which philosophers call pro- 
bable. Yet, in common language, it would 
sound oddly to say, it is probable there is 
such a city as Rome, because it would 
imply some degree of doubt or uncertainty. 

Taking probable evidence, therefore, in 
the philosophical sense, as it is opposed to 
demonstrative, it may have any degrees of 
evidence, from the least to the greatest. 

I think, in most cases, we measure the 
degrees of evidence by the effect they have 
upon a sound understanding, when com- 
prehended clearly and without prejudice. 
Every degree of evidence perceived by the 
mind, produces a proportioned degree of 
assent or belief. The judgment may be in 
perfect suspense between two contradictory 
opinions, when there is no evidence for 
either, or equal evidence for both. The 
least preponderancy on one side inclines the 
judgment in proportion. Belief is mixed 
with doubt, more or less, until we come 
to the highest degree of evidence, when 
all doubt vanishes, and the belief is firm 
and immovable. This degree of evidence, 
the highest the human faculties can attain, 
we call certainty. [692] 

Probable evidence not only differs in kind 
from demonstrative, but is itself of different 
kinds. The chief of these I shall mention, 
without pretending to make a complete 
enumeration. 

The first kind is that of human testimony, 
upon which the greatest part of human 
knowledge is built. 

The faith of history depends upon it, as 
well as the judgment of solemn tribunals, 
with regard to men's acquired rights, and 
with regard to their guilt or innocence, 
when they are charged with crimes. A 
great part of the business of the judge, of 
counsel at the bar, of the historian, the 
critic, and the antiquarian, is to canvass 
and weigh this kind of evidence ; and no 
man can act with common prudence in the 
ordinary occurrences of life, who has not 
some competent judgment of it. 

The belief we give to testimony, in many 

cases, is not solely grounded upon the vera- 

[690-692] 



CHAP, in.] 



OF PROBABLE REASONING. 



483 



city of the testifier. In a single testimony, 
we consider the motives a man might have 
to falsify. If there be no appearance of 
any such motive, much more if there be 
motives on the other side, his testimony has 
weight independent of his moral character. 
If the testimony be circumstantial, we con- 
sider how far the circumstances agree to- 
gether, and with things that are known. 
It is so very difficult to fabricate a story 
which cannot be detected by a judicious 
examination of the circumstances, that it 
acquires evidence by being able to bear 
such a trial. There is an art in detecting 
false evidence in judicial proceedings, well 
known to able judges and barristers ; so 
that I believe few false witnesses leave the 
bar without suspicion of their guilt. 

When there is an agreement of many 
witnesses, in a great variety of circum- 
stances, without the possibility of a previous 
concert, the evidence may be equal to that 
of demonstration. [693] 

A second kind of probable evidence, is 
the authority of those who are good judges 
of the point in question. The supreme 
court of judicature of the British nation, is 
often determined by the opinion of lawyers 
in a point of law, of physicians in a point of 
medicine, and of other artists, in what re- 
lates to their several professions. And, in 
the common affairs of life, we frequently 
rely upon the judgment of others, in points 
of which we are not proper judges our- 
selves. 

A third kind of probable evidence, is that 
by which we recognise the identity of things 
and persons of our acquaintance. That two 
swords, two horses, or two persons, may be 
so perfectly alike as not to be distinguish- 
able by those to whom they are best known, 
cannot be shewn to be impossible. But we 
learn either from nature, orfrom experience, 
that it never happens ; or so very rarely, 
that a person or thing, well known to us, is 
immediately recognised without any doubt, 
when we perceive the marks or signs by 
which we were in use to distinguish it from 
all other individuals of the kind. 

This evidence we rely upon in the most 
important affairs of life ; and, by this evi- 
dence, the identity, both of things and of 
persons, is determined in courts of judica- 
ture. 

A fourth kind of probable evidence, is 
that which we have of men's future actions 
and conduct, from the general principles of 
action in man, or from our knowledge of the 
individuals. 

Notwithstanding the folly and vice that 
are to be found among men, there is a certain 
degree of prudence and probity which we 
rely upon in every man that is not insane. 
If it were not so, no man would be safe in 
the company of another, and there could be 
[693-695] 



no society among mankind. If men were 
as much disposed to hurt as to do good, to 
lie as to speak truth, they could not live to- 
gether ; they would keep at as great dis- 
tance from one another as possible, and the 
race would soon perish. [694] 

We expect that men will take some care 
of themselves, of their family, friends, and 
reputation ; that they will not injure others 
without some temptation ; that they will 
have some gratitude for good offices, and 
some resentment of injuries. 

Such maxims with regard to human con- 
duct, are the foundation of all political rea- 
soning, and of common prudence in the con- 
duct of life. Hardly can a man form any 
project in public or in private life, which 
does not depend upon the conduct of other 
men, as well as his own, and which does not 
go upon the supposition that men will act 
such a part in such circumstances. This 
evidence may be probable in a very high 
degree ; but can never be demonstrative. 
The best concerted project may fail, and 
wise counsels may be frustrated, because 
some individual acted a part which it would 
have been against all reason to expect. 

Another kind of probable evidence, the 
counterpart of the last, is that by which we 
collect men's characters and designs from 
their actions, speech, and other external 
signs. 

We see not men's hearts, nor the prin- 
ciples by which they are actuated ; but 
there are external signs of their principles 
and dispositions, which, though not certain, 
may sometimes be more trusted than their 
professions ; and it is from external signs 
that we must draw all the knowledge we 
can attain of men's characters. 

The next kind of probable evidence I 
mention, is that which mathematicians call 
the probability of chances. 

We attribute some events to chance, be 
cause we know only the remote cause which 
must produce some one event of a num- 
ber ; but know not the more immediate 
cause which determines a particular event 
of that number in preference to the others. 
[695] 

I think all the chances about which we rea- 
son in mathematics are of this kind. Thus, 
in throwing a just die upon a table, we say 
it is an equal chance which of the six sides 
shall be turned up ; because neither the 
person who throws, nor the bystanders, 
know the precise measure of force and di- 
rection necessary to turn up any one side 
rather than another. There are here, there- 
fore six events, one of which must happen ; 
and as all are supposed to have equal pro- 
bability, the probability of any one side 
being turned up, the ace, for instance, is as 
one to the remaining number, five. 

The probability of turning up two aces 
2 I 2 



484 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VII. 



with two dice is as one to thirty-five ; because 
here there are thirty-six events, each of 
which has equal probability. 

Upon such principles as these, the doc- 
trine of chances has furnished a field of de- 
monstrative reasoning of great extent, al- 
though the events about which this reason- 
ing is employed be not necesssary, but con- 
tingent, and be not certain, but probable.- 

This may seem to contradict a principle 
before advanced, that contingent truths are 
not capable of demonstration ; but it does 
not : for, in the mathematical reasonings 
about chance, the conclusion demonstrated, 
is not, that such an event shall happen, but 
that the probability of its happening bears 
such a ratio to the probability of its failing ; 
and this conclusion is necessary upon the 
suppositions on which it is grounded. 

The last kind of probable evidence I shall 
mention, is that by which the known laws 
of Nature have been discovered, and the 
effects which have been produced by them 
in former ages, or which may be expected 
in time to come. 

The laws of Nature are the rules by which 
the Supreme Being governs the world. We 
deduce them only from facts that fall within 
our own observation, or are properly attested 
by those who have observed them. [696] 

The knowledge of some of the laws of 
nature is necessary to all men in the con- 
duct of life. These are soon discovered 
even by savages. They know that fire 
burns, that water drowns, that bodies gra- 
vitate towards the earth. They know that 
day and night, summer and winter, regu- 
larly succeed each other. As far back as 
their experience and information reach, 
they know that these have happened regu- 
larly ; and, upon this ground, they are led, 
by the constitution of human nature, to ex- 
pect that they will happen in time to come, 
in like circumstances. 

The knowledge which the philosopher 
attains of the laws of Nature differs from 
that of the vulgar, not in the first principles 
on which it is grounded, but in its extent 
and accuracy. He collects with care the 
phenomena that lead to the same conclu- 
sion, and compares them with those that 
seem to contradict or to limit it. He ob- 
serves the circumstances on which every 
phenomenon depends, and distinguishes 
them carefully from those that are accident- 
ally conjoined with it. He puts natural 
bodies in various situations, and applies 
them to one another in various ways, on 
purpose to observe the effect ; and thus ac- 
quires from his senses a more extensive 
knowledge of the course of Nature in a short 
time, than could be collected by casual ob- 
servation in many ages. 

But what is the result of his laborious 
researches ? It is, that, as far as he has 



been able to observe, such things have 
always happened in such circumstances, and 
such bodies have always been found to have 
such properties. These are matters of fact, 
attested by sense, memory, and testimony, 
just as the few facts which the vulgar know 
are attested to them. 

And what conclusions does the philoso. 
pher draw from the facts he has collected ? 
They are, that like events have happened 
in former times in like circumstances, and 
will happen in time to come ; and these con- 
clusions are built on the very same ground 
on which the simple rustic concludes that 
the sun will rise to-morrow. [697] 

Facts reduced to general rules, and the 
consequences of those general rules, are all 
that we really know of the material world. 
And the evidence that such general rules 
have no exceptions, as well as the evidence 
that they will be the same in time to come 
as they have been in time past, can never 
be demonstrative. It is only that species 
of evidence which philosophers call probable. 
General rules may have exceptions or limit- 
ations which no man ever had occasion to 
observe. The laws of nature may be changed 
by him who established them. But we are 
led by our constitution to rely upon their 
continuance with as little doubt as if it was 
demonstrable. 

I pretend not to have made a complete 
enumeration of all the kinds of probable 
evidence ; but those I have mentioned are 
sufficient to shew, that the far greatest part, 
and the most interesting part of our know- 
ledge, must rest upon evidence of this kind ; 
and that many things are certain for which 
we have only that kind of evidence which 
philosophers call probable. 



CHAPTER IV. 

of mr hume's scepticism with regard to 

REASON. 

In the " Treatise of Human Nature," 
book I. part iv. § 1, the author undertakes 
to prove two points : — First, That all that 
is called human knowledge (meaning de- 
monstrative knowledge) is only probability ; 
and, secondly, That this probability, when 
duly examined, evanishes by degrees, and 
leaves at last no evidence at all : so that, 
in the issue, there is no ground to believe 
anyone proposition rather than its contrary ; 
and " all those are certainly fools who reason 
or believe anything." [698] 

According to this account, reason, that 
boasted prerogative of man, and the light of 
his mind, is an ignis fatuus, which misleads 
the wandering traveller, and leaves him at 
last in absolute darkness. 

How "unhappy is the condition of man, 



[696-698] 



chap, iv.] OF MR HUME'S SCEPTICISM ABOUT REASON. 



485 



born under a necessity of believing contra- 
dictions, and of trusting to a guide who con- 
fesses herself to be a false one ! 

It is some comfort, that this doctrine can 
never be seriously adopted by any man iu 
his senses. And after this author had 
shewn that " all the rules of logic require a 
total extinction of all belief and evidence," 
he himself, and all men that are not insane, 
must have believed many things, and yielded 
assent to the evidence which he had ex- 
tinguished. 

This, indeed, he is so candid as to acknow- 
ledge. " He finds himself absolutely and 
necessarily determined, to live and talk and 
act like other people in the common affairs 
of life. And since reason is incapable of 
dispelling these clouds, most fortunately it 
happens, that nature herself suffices to that 
purpose, and cures him of this philosophical 
melancholy and delirium." See § 7- 

This was surely a very kind and friendly 
interposition of nature ; for the effects of 
this philosophical delirium, if carried into 
life, must have been very melancholy. 

But what pity is it, that nature, (what- 
ever is meant by that personage,) so kind 
in curing this delirium, should be so cruel 
as to cause it. Doth the same fountain 
send forth sweet waters and bitter ? Is it 
not more probable, that, if the cure was the 
work of nature, the disease came from 
another hand, and was the work of the 
philosopher ? [699] 

To pretend to prove by reasoning that 
there is no force in reason, does indeed look 
like a philosophical delirium. It is like a 
man's pretending to see clearly, that he 
himself and all other men are blind. 

A common symptom of delirium is, to 
think that all other men are fools or mad. 
This appears to have been the case of our 
author, who concluded, " That all those are 
certainly fools who reason or believe any- 
thing." 

Whatever was the cause of this delirium, 
it must be granted that, if it was real and 
not feigned, it was not to be cured by rea- 
soning ; for what can be more absurd than 
to attempt to convince a man by reasoning 
who disowns the authority of reason. It 
was, therefore, very fortunate that Nature 
found other means of curing it. 

It may, however, not be improper to 
inquire, whether, as the author thinks, it. 
was produced by a just application of the 
rules of logic, or, as others may be apt to 
think, by the misapplication and abuse of 
them. 

First, Because we are fallible, the author 
infers that all knowledge degenerates into 
probability. 

That man, and probably every created 
being, is fallible ; and that a fallible being 
cannot have that perfect comprehension 
f699-701] 



and assurance of truth which an infallible 
being has — I think ought to be granted. It 
becomes a fallible being to be modest, open 
to new. light, and sensible that, by some 
false bias, or by rash judging, he may be 
misled. If this be called a degree of scep- 
ticism, I cannot help approving of it, being 
persuaded that the man who makes the best 
use he can of the faculties which God has 
given him, without thinking them more per- 
fect than they really are, may have all the 
belief that is necessary in the conduct of 
life, and all that is necessary to his accept- 
ance with his Maker. [700] 

It is granted, then, that human judg- 
ments ought always to be formed with an 
humble sense of our fallibility in judging. 

This is all that can be inferred by the 
rules of logic from our being fallible. And 
if this be all that is meant by our know- 
ledge degenerating into probability, I know 
no person of a different opinion. 

But it may be observed, that the author 
here uses the word probability in a sense 
for which I know no authority but his own. 
Philosophers understand probability as op- 
posed to demonstration ; the vulgar as 
opposed to certainty ; but this author un- 
derstands it as opposed to infallibility, which 
no man claims. 

One who believes himself to be fallible 
may still hold it to be certain that two and 
two make four, and that two contradictory 
propositions cannot both be true. He may 
believe some things to be probable only, 
and other things to be demonstrable, with- 
out making any pretence to infallibility. 

If we use words in their proper meaning, 
it is impossible that demonstration should 
degenerate into probability from the imper- 
fection of our faculties. Our judgment can- 
not change the nature of the things about 
which we judge. What is really demon- 
stration, will still be so, whatever judgment 
we form concerning it- It may, likewise, 
be observed, that, when we mistake that foi 
demonstration which really is not, the con- 
sequence of this mistake is, not that de- 
monstration degenerates into probability, 
but that what we took to be demonstration 
is no proof at all ; for one false step in .a 
demonstration destroys the whole, but can- 
not turn it into another kind of proof. 
[701] 

Upon the whole, then, this first conclu- 
sion of our author, That the fallibility of 
human judgment turns all knowledge into 
probability, if understood literally, is absurd ; 
but, if it be only a figure of speech, and 
means no more but that, in all our judg- 
ments, we ought to be sensible of our falli- 
bility, and ought to hold our opinions with 
that modesty that becomes fallible crea- 
tures — which I take to be what the author 
meant — this, I think, nobody denies, nor 



486 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VII 



was it necessary to enter into a laborious 
proof of it. 

One is never in greater danger of trans- 
gressing against the rules of logic than in 
attempting to prove what needs no proof. 
Of this we have an instance in this very 
case ; for the author begins his proof, that 
all human judgments are fallible, with af- 
firming that some are infallible. 

" In all demonstrative sciences," says 
he, " the rules are certain and infallible ; 
but when we apply them, our fallible and 
uncertain faculties are very apt to depart 
from them, and fall into error." 

He had forgot, surely, that the rules of 
demonstrative sciences are discovered by 
our fallible and uncertain faculties, and 
have no authority but that of human judg- 
ment. If they be infallible, some human 
judgments are infallible ; and there are many 
in various branches of human knowledge 
which have as good a claim to infallibility 
as the rules of the demonstrative sciences. 

We have reason here to find fault with 
our author for not being sceptical enough, 
as well as for a mistake in reasoning, when 
he claims infallibility to certain decisions of 
the human faculties, in order to prove that 
all their decisions are fallible. 

The second point which he attempts to 
prove is, That this probability, when duly 
examined, suffers a continual diminution, 
and at last a total extinction. 

The obvious consequence of this is, that 
no fallible being can have good reason to 
believe anything at all ; but let us hear the 
proof. [702] 

" In every judgment, we ought to cor- 
rect the first judgment derived from the 
nature of the object, by another judgment 
derived from the nature of the understand- 
ing. Beside the original uncertainty inher- 
ent in the subject, there arises another, 
derived from the weakness of the faculty 
which judges. Having adjusted these two 
uncertainties together, we are obliged, by 
our reason, to add a new uncertainty, de- 
rived from the possibility of error in the 
estimation we make of the truth and fidelity 
of our faculties. This is a doubt of which, 
if we would closely pursue our reasoning, 
we cannot avoid giving a decision- But 
this decision, though it should be favour- 
able to our preceding judgment, being 
founded only on probability, must weaken 
still farther our first evidence. The third 
uncertainty must, in like manner be criti- 
cised by a fourth, and so on without end. 

" Now, as every one of these uncertainties 
takes away a part of the original evidence, 
it must at last be reduced to nothing. Let 
our first belief be ever so strong, it must in- 
fallibly perish, by passing through so many 
examinations, each of which carries off 
somewhat of its force and vigour. No finite 



object can subsist under a decrease repeated 
in infinitum. 

11 When I reflect on the natural fallibil- 
ity of my judgment, I have less confidence 
in my opinions than when I only consider 
the objects concerning which I reason. And 
when I proceed still farther, to turn the scru- 
tiny against every successive estimation I 
make of my faculties, all the rules of logic 
require a continual diminution, and at last 
a total extinction of belief and evidence." 

This is the author's Achillean argument 
against the evidence of reason, from which 
he concludes, that a man who would govern 
his belief by reason must believe nothing at 
all, and that belief is an act, not of the co- 
gitative, but of the sensitive part of our 
nature. [703] 

If there be any such thing as motion, 
(said an ancient Sceptic,*) the swift-footed 
Achilles could never overtake an old man 
in a journey. For, suppose the old man to 
set out a thousand paces before Achilles, 
and that, while Achilles has travelled the 
thousand paces, the old man has gone five 
hundred ; when Achilles has gone the five 
hundred, the old man has gone two hun- 
dred and fifty ; and when Achilles has 
gone the two hundred and fifty, the old 
man is still one hundred and twenty-five 
before him. Repeat these estimations in 
infinitum, and you will still find the old man 
foremost ; therefore Achilles can never 
overtake him ; therefore there can be no 
such thing as motion. 

The reasoning of the modern Sceptic 
against reason is equally ingenious, and 
equally convincing. Indeed, they have a 
great similarity. 

If we trace the journey of Achilles two 
thousand paces, we shall find the very 
point where the old man is overtaken. But 
this short journey, by dividing it into an 
infinite number of stages, with correspond- 
ing estimations, is made to appear infinite. 
In like manner, our author, subjecting 
every judgment to an infinite number of 
successive probable estimations, reduces 
the evidence to nothing. 

To return then to the argument of the 
modern Sceptic. I examine the proof of a 
theorem of Euclid. It appears to me to be 
strict demonstration. But I may have 
overlooked some fallacy; therefore I ex- 
amine it again and again, but can find no 
flaw in it. I find all that have examined 
it agree with me. I have now that evidence 
of the truth of the proposition which I and 
all men call demonstration, and that belief 
of it which we call certainty. [704] 

Here my sceptical friend interposes, and 
assures me, that the rules of logic reduce 

* Zeno Eleates. He is improperly called, simpti- 
citer, Sceptic. — H. 

[702- 70 1] 



chap, iv.] OF MR HUME'S SCEPTICISM ABOUT REASON. 



487 



this demonstration to no evidence at all. 
I am willing to hear what step in it he thinks 
fallacious, and why. He makes no objec- 
tion to any part of the demonstration, but 
pleads my fallibility in judging. I have 
made the proper allowance for this already, 
by being open to conviction. But, says he, 
there are two uncertainties, the first inherent 
in the subject, which I have already shewn 
to have only probable evidence ; the second 
arising from the weakness of the faculty 
that j udges. I answer, it is the weakness of 
the faculty only that reduces this demonstra- 
tion to what you call probability. You 
must not therefore make it a second uncer- 
tainty; for it is the same with the first. 
To take credit twice in an account for 
the same article is not agreeable to the 
rules of logic. Hitherto, therefore, there 
is but one uncertainty — to wit, my fallibility 
in judging. 

But, says my friend, you are obliged by 
reason to add a new uncertainty, derived 
from the possibility of error in the estima- 
tion you make of the truth and fidelity of 
your faculties. I answer — 

This estimation is ambiguously ex- 
pressed ; it may either mean an estimation 
of my liableness to err by the misapplica- 
tion and abuse of my faculties ; or it may 
mean an estimation of my liableness to err 
by conceiving my faculties to be true and 
faithful, while they may be false and falla- 
cious in themselves, even when applied in 
the best manner. I shall consider this 
estimation in each of these senses. 

If the first be the estimation meant, it is 
true that reason directs us, as fallible crea- 
tures, to carry along with us, in all our 
judgments, a sense of our fallibility. It is 
true also, that we are in greater danger of 
erring in some cases, and less in others ; 
and that this danger of erring may, accord- 
ing to the circumstances of the case, admit 
of an estimation, which we ought likewise 
to carry along with us in every judgment 
we form. [705] 

When a demonstration is short and plain ; 
when the point to be proved does not 
touch our interest or our passions ; when 
the faculty of judging, in such cases, has 
acquired strength by much exercise — there is 
less danger of erring ; when the contrary 
circumstances take place, there is more. 

In the present case, every circumstance 
is favourable to the judgment I have formed. 
There cannot be less danger of erring in 
any case, excepting, perhaps, when I judge 
of a self-evident axiom. 

The Sceptic farther urges, that this deci- 
sion, though favourable to my first judg- 
ment, being founded only on probability, 
must still weaken the evidence of that judg- 
ment- 

Here I cannot help being of a quite con- 
£705, 706"| 



trary opinion ; nor can I imagine how an 
ingenious author could impose upon himself 
so grossly ; for surely he did not intend to 
impose upon his reader. 

After repeated examination of a propo- 
sition of Euclid, I judge it to be strictly 
demonstrated ; this is my first judgment. 
But, as I am liable to err from various 
causes, I consider how far I may have been 
misled by any of these causes in this judg- 
ment. My decision upon this second point 
is favourable to my first judgment, and 
therefore, as I apprehend, must strengthen 
it. To say that this decision, because it is 
only probable, must weaken the first evi- 
dence, seems to me contrary to all rules of 
logic, and to common sense. 

The first judgment may be compared to 
the testimony of a credible witness ; the 
second, after a' scrutiny into the character 
of the witness, wipes off every objection 
that can be made to it, and therefore surely 
must confirm and not weaken his testi- 
mony. [706] 

But let us suppose, that, in another case, 
I examine my first judgment upon some 
point, and find that it was attended with 
unfavourable circumstances, what, in rea- 
son, and according to the rules of logic, 
ought to be the effect of this discovery ? 

The effect surely will be, and ought to 
be, to make me less confident in my first 
judgment, until I examine the point anew 
in more favourable circumstances. If it 
be a matter of importance, I return to 
weigh the evidence of my first judgment. 
If it was precipitate before, it must now be 
deliberate in every point. If, at first, I 
was in passion, I must now be cool. If I 
had an interest in the decision, I must 
place the interest on the other side. 

It is evident that this review of the sub- 
ject may confirm my first judgment, not- 
withstanding the suspicious circumstances 
that attended it. Though the judge was 
biassed or corrupted, it does not follow that 
the sentence was unjust. The rectitude of 
the decision does not depend upon the cha- 
racter of the judge, but upon the nature of 
the case. From that only, it must be deter- 
mined whether the decision be just. The 
circumstances that rendered it suspicious 
are mere presumptions, which have no force 
against direct evidence. 

Thus, I have considered the effect of this 
estimation of our liableness to err in our 
first judgment, and have allowed to it all 
the effect that reason and the rules of logic 
permit. In the case I first supposed, and 
in every case where we can discover no 
cause of error, it affords a presumption in 
favour of the first judgment. In other 
cases, it may afford a presumption against 
it. But the rules of logic require, that we 
should not judge by presumptions, where 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VII. 



we have direct evidence. The effect of an 
unfavourable presumption should only be, 
to make us examine the evidence with the 
greater care. [707] 

The sceptic urges, in the last place, that 
this estimation must be subjected to another 
estimation, that to another, and so on, in in- 
finitum ; and as every new estimation takes 
away from the evidence of the first judg- 
ment, it must at last be totally annihilated. 

I answer, first, It has been shewn above, 
that the first estimation, supposing it un- 
favourable, can only afford a presumption 
against the first judgment ; the second, 
upon the same supposition, will be only the 
presumption of a presumption ; and the 
third, the presumption that there is a pre- 
sumption of a presumption. This infinite 
series of presumptions resembles an infinite 
series of quantities, decreasing in geome- 
trical proportion, which amounts only to a 
finite sum. The infinite series of stages of 
Achilles'sjourney after the old man, amounts 
only to two thousand paces ; nor can this 
infinite series of presumptions outweigh one 
solid argument in favour of the first judg- 
ment, supposing them all to be unfavour- 
able to it. 

Secondly, I have shewn, that the estima- 
tion of our first judgment may strengthen 
it ; and the same thing may be said of all the 
subsequent estimations. It would, there- 
fore, be as reasonable to conclude, that the 
first judgment will be brought to infallible 
certainty when this series of estimations is 
wholly in its favour, as that its evidence 
will be brought to nothing by such a series 
supposed to be wholly unfavourable to it. 
But, in reality, one serious and cool re- 
examination of the evidence by which our 
first judgment is supported, has, and in 
reason ought to have more force to strengthen 
or weaken it, than an infinite series of such 
estimations as our author requires. 

Thirdly, I know no reason nor rule in 
logic, that requires that such a series of 
estimations should follow every particular 
judgment. [708] 

A wise man, who has practised reasoning, 
knows that he is fallible, and carries this 
conviction along with him in every judg- 
ment he forms. He knows likewise that 
he is more liable to err in some cases than 
in others. He has a scale in his mind, by 
which he estimates his liableness to err, and 
by this he regulates the degree of his assent 
in his first judgment upon any point. 

The author's reasoning supposes, that a 
man, when he forms his first judgment, 
conceives himself to be infallible ; that by a 
second and subsequent judgment, he dis- 
covers that he is not infallible ; and that by 
a third judgment, subsequent to the second, 
he estimates his liableness to err in such a 
case as the present. 



If the man proceed in this order. I grant, 
that his second judgment will, with good 
reason, bring down the first from supposed 
infallibility to fallibility ; and that his third 
judgment will, in some degree, either 
strengthen or weaken the first, as it is cor- 
rected by the second. 

But every man of understanding proceeds 
in a contrary order. When about to judge 
in any particular point, he knows already 
that he is not infallible. He knows what 
are the cases in which he is most or least 
liable to err. The conviction of these things 
is always present to his mind, and influences 
the degree of his assent in his first judg- 
ment, as far as to him appears reasonable. 

If he should afterwards find reason to 
suspect his first judgment, and desires to 
have all the satisfaction his faculties can 
give, reason will direct him not to form 
such a series of estimations upon estima- 
tions, as this author requires, but to examine 
the evidence of his first judgment carefully 
and coolly ; and this review may very reason- 
ably, according to its result, either strengthen 
or weaken, or totally overturn his first 
judgment. [709] 

This infinite series of estimations, there- 
fore, is not the method that reason directs, 
in order to form our judgment in any case. 
It is introduced without necessity, without 
any use but to puzzle the understanding, 
and to make us think, that to judge, even 
in the simplest and plainest cases, is a mat- 
ter of insurmountable difficulty and endless 
labour ; just as the ancient Sceptic, to make 
a journey of two thousand paces appear 
endless, divided it into an infinite number 
of stages. 

But we observed, that the estimation 
which our author requires, may admit of 
another meaning, which, indeed, is more 
agreeable to the expression, but inconsist- 
ent with what he advanced before. 

By the possibility of error in the estima- 
tion of the truth and fidelity of our faculties, 
may be meant, that we may err by esteem- 
ing our faculties true and faithful, while they 
may be false and fallacious, even when used 
according to the rules of reason and logic. 

If this be meant, I answer, first, That 
the truth and fidelity of our faculty of judg- 
ing is, and must be taken for granted in 
every judgment and in every estimation. 

If the sceptic can seriously doubt of the 
truth and fidelity of his faculty of judging 
when properly used, and suspend his judg- 
ment upon that point till he finds proof, his 
scepticism admits of no cure by reasoning, 
and he must even continue in it until he 
have new faculties given him, which shall 
have authority to sit in judgment upon the 
old. Nor is there any need of an endless 
succession of doubts upon this subject ; for 
the first puts an end to all judgment and 
[707~709"» 



chap. iv.J OF MR HUME'S SCEPTICISM ABOUT REASON. 



489 



reasoning, and to the possibility of convic- 
tion by that means. The sceptic has here 
got possession of a stronghold, which is im- 
pregnable to reasoning, and we must leave 
him in possession of it till Nature, by other 
means, makes him give it up. [710] 

Secondly, I observe, that this ground of 
scepticism, from the supposed infidelity of 
our faculties, contradicts what the author 
before advanced in this very argument — to 
wit, that " the rules of the demonstrative 
sciences are certain and infallible, and that 
truth is the natural effect of reason, and 
that error arises from the irruption of other 
causes." 

But, perhaps, he made these concessions 
unwarily. He is, therefore, at liberty to 
retract them, and to rest his scepticism upon 
this sole foundation, That no reasoning can 
prove the truth and fidelity of our faculties- 
Here he stands upon firm ground ; for it is 
evident that every argument offered to 
prove the truth and fidelity of our faculties, 
takes for granted the thing in question, and 
is, therefore, that kind of sophism which 
logicians call petitio principii. 

All we would ask of this kind of sceptic 
is, that he would be uniform and consistent, 
and that his practice in life do not belie Ids 
profession of scepticism, with regard to the 
fidelity of his faculties ; for the want of faith, 
as well as faith itself, is best shewn by 
works. If a sceptic avoid the fire as much 
as those who believe it dangerous to go 
into it, we can hardly avoid thinking his 
scepticism to be feigned, and not real. 

Our author, indeed, was aware, that 
neither his scepticism nor that of any other 
person, was able to endure this trial, and, 
therefore, enters a caveat against it. 
" Neither I," savs he, " nor any other per- 
son was ever sincerely and constantly of 
that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and 
uncontrollable necessity, has determined us 
to judge, as well as to breathe and feel. My 
intention, therefore," says he, " in display- 
ing so carefully the arguments of that fan- 
tastic sect, is only to make the reader sen- 
sible of the truth of my hypothesis, that all 
our reasonings concerning causes and effects, 
are derived from nothing but custom, and 
that belief is more properly an act of the 
[710-713] 



sensitive than of the cogitative part of our 
nature." [711] 

We have before considered the first part 
of this hypothesis, Whether our reasoning 
about causes be derived only from custom ? 

The other part of the author's hypothesis 
here mentioned is darkly expressed, though 
the expression seems to be studied, as it is 
put in Italics. It cannot, surely, mean 
that belief is not an act of thinking. It is 
not, therefore, the power of thinking that 
he calls the cogitative part of our nature. 
Neither can it be the power of judging, for 
all belief implies judgment ; and to believe 
a proposition means the same thing as to 
judge it to be true. It seems, therefore, to 
be the power of reasoning that he calls the 
cogitative part of our nature. 

If this be the meaning, I agree to it in 
part. The belief of first principles is not 
an act of the reasoning power ; for all rea- 
soning must be grounded upon them. We 
judge them to be true, and believe them 
without reasoning. But why this power of 
judging of first principles should be called 
the sensitive part of our nature, I do not 
understand. 

As our belief of first principles is an act 
of pure judgment without reasoning ; so 
our belief of the conclusions drawn by rea- 
soning from first principles, may, I think, be 
called an act of the reasoning faculty. 
[712] 

Upon the whole, I see only two conclu- 
sions that can be fairly drawn from this 
profound and intricate reasoning against 
reason. The first is, That we are fallible 
in all our judgments and in all our reason- 
ings. The second. That the truth and 
fidelity of our faculties can never be proved 
by reasoning ; and, therefore, our belief of 
it cannot be founded on reasoning. If the 
last be what the author calls his hypothesis, 
I subscribe to it, and think it not an hypo- 
thesis, but a manifest truth ; though I con- 
ceive it to be very improperly expressed, by 
saying that belief is more properly an act 
of the sensitive than of the cogitative part 
of our nature.* [713] 

* In the preceding strictures, the Sceptic »«again 
too often assailed as a Dogmatist. See above p. 444 
note * H. 



490 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay viii. 



ESSAY VIII, 



OF TASTE. 



CHAPTER I. 

OP TASTE IN GENERAL. 

That power of the mind by which we 
are capable of discerning and relishing the 
beauties of Nature, and whatever is excel- 
lent in the fine arts, is called taste. 

The external sense of taste, by which we 
distinguish and relish the various kinds of 
food, has given occasion to a metaphorical 
application of its name to this internal 
power of the mind, by which we perceive 
what is beautiful and what is deformed or 
defective in the various objects that we 
contemplate. 

Like the taste of the palate, it relishes 
some things, is disgusted with others ; with 
regard to many, is indifferent or dubious ; 
and is considerably influenced by habit, by 
associations, and by opinion. These obvious 
analogies between external and internal 
taste, have led men, in all ages, and in 
all or most polished languages,* to give the 
name of the external sense to this power of 
discerning what is beautiful with pleasure, 
and what is ugly and faulty in its kind with 
disgust. [714] 

In treating of this as an intellectual 
power of the mind, I intend only to make 
some observations, first on its nature, and 
then on its objects. 

1 . In the external sense of taste, we are 
led by reason and reflection to distinguish 
between the agreeable sensation we feel, and 
the quality in the object which occasions it. 
Both have the same name, and on that ac- 
count are apt to be confounded by the vulgar, 
and even by philosophers. The sensation 
I feel when I taste any sapid body is in my 
mind; but there is a real quality in the 
body which is the cause of this sensation. 
These two things have the same name in 
language, not from any similitude in their 
nature, but because the one is the sign of 
the other, and because there is little occa- 
sion in common life to distinguish them. 

This was fully explained in treating of the 
secondary qualities of bodies. The reason 
of taking notice of it now is, that the in- 
ternal power of taste bears a great analogy 
ra this respect to the external. 

When a beautiful object is before us, we 

* 1 his is hardly correct.— H. 



may distiuguish the agreeable emotion it 
produces in us, from the quality of the ob- 
ject which causes that emotion. When I 
hear an air in music that pleases me, I say, 
it is fine, it is excellent. This excellence is 
not in me; it is in the music. But the 
pleasure it gives is not in the music ; it is 
in me. Perhaps I cannot say what it is in 
the tune that pleases my ear, as I cannot 
say what it is in a sapid body that pleases my 
palate ; but there is a quality in the sapid 
body which pleases my palate, and I call it 
a delicious taste ; and there is a quality in 
the tune that pleases my taste,, and I call it 
a fine or an excellent air. 

This ought the rather to be observed, 
because it is become a fashion among mo- 
dern philosophers, to resolve all our percep- 
tions into mere feelings or sensations in the 
person that perceives, without anything 
corresponding to those feelings in the ex- 
ternal object. [715] According to those 
philosophers, there is no heat in the fire, 
no taste in a sapid body ; the taste and the 
heat being only in the person that feels 
them.* In like manner, there is no beauty 
in any object whatsoever ; it is only a sens- 
ation or feeling in the person that per- 
ceives it. 

The language and the common sense of 
mankind contradict this theory. Even those 
who hold it, find themselves obliged to use 
a language that contradicts it. I had occa- 
sion to shew, that there is no solid founda- 
tion for it when applied to the secondary 
qualities of body ; and the same arguments 
shew equally, that it has no solid foundation 
when applied to the beauty of objects, or to 
any of those qualities that are perceived by 
a good taste. 

But, though some of the qualities that 
please a good taste resemble the secondary 
qualities of body, and therefore may be 
called occult qualities, as we only feel their 
effect, and have no more knowledge of the 
cause, but that it is something which is 
adapted by nature to produce that effect — 
this is not always the case. 

Our judgment of beauty is in many cases 
more enlightened. A work of art may 
appear beautiful to the most ignorant, even 
to a child. It pleases, but he knows not 
___^ . 

* But see, above, p. 205, b, note *, and p. 310, b, 
note f— H. 

[714, 715] 



OF TASTE IN GENERAL. 



491 



why. To one who understands it perfectly, 
and perceives how every part is fitted with 
exact judgment to its end, the beauty is not 
mysterious ; it is perfectly comprehended ; 
and he knows wherein it consists, as well 
as how it affects him. 

2. We may observe, that, though all the 
tastes- we perceive by the palate are either 
agreeable or disagreeable, or indifferent ; 
yet, among those that are agreeable, there 
is great diversity, not in degree only, but in 
kind. And, as we have not generical names 
for all the different kinds of taste, we dis- 
tinguish them by the bodies in which they 
are found. [716] 

In like manner, all the objects of our 
internal taste are either beautiful, or dis- 
agreeable, or indifferent ; yet of beauty there 
is a great diversity, not only of degree, but 
of kind. The beauty of a demonstration, 
the beauty of a poem, the beauty of a palace, 
the beauty of a piece of music, the beauty 
of a fine woman, and many more that might 
be named, are different kinds of beauty ; 
and we have no names to distinguish them 
but the names of the different objects to 
which they belong. 

As there is such diversity in the kinds of 
beauty as well as in the degrees, we need 
not think it strange that philosophers have 
gone into different systems in analysing it, 
and enumerating its simple ingredients. 
They have made many just observations on 
the subject ; but, from the love of simplicity, 
have reduced it to fewer principles than the 
nature of the thing will permit, having had 
in their eye some particular kinds of beauty, 
while they overlooked others. 

There are moral beauties as well as na- 
tural ; beauties in the objects of sense, and 
in intellectual objects ; in the works of men, 
and in the works of God ; in things inani- 
mate, in brute animals, and in rational 
beings ; in the constitution of the body of 
man, and in the constitution of his mind. 
There is no real excellence which has not 
its beauty to a discerning eye, when placed 
in a proper point of view ; and it is as diffi- 
cult to enumerate the ingredients of beauty 
as the ingredients of real excellence. 

3. The taste of the palate may be accounted 
most just and perfect, when we relish the 
things that are fit for the nourishment of 
the body, and are disgusted with things of 
a contrary nature. The manifest intention 
of nature in giving us this sense, is, that 
we may discern what it is fit for us to eat 
and to drink, and what it is not. Brute 
animals are directed in the choice of their 
food merely by their taste. [717] Led by 
this guide, they choose the food that nature 
intended for them, and seldom make mis- 
takes, unless they be pinched by hunger, or 
deceived by artificial compositions. In in- 
fants likewise the taste is commonly sound 
[716-718J 



and uncorrupted, and of the simple produc- 
tions of nature they relish the things that 
are most wholesome. 

In like manner, our internal taste ought 
to be accounted most just and perfect, when 
we are pleased with things that are most 
excellent in their kind, and displeased with 
the contrary. The intention of nature is 
no less evident in this internal taste than 
in the external. Every excellence has a 
real beauty and charm that makes it an 
agreeable object to those who have the 
faculty of discerning its beauty ; and this 
faculty is what we call a good taste. 

A man who, by any disorder in his mental 
powers, or by bad habits, has contracted a 
relish for what has no real excellence, or 
what is deformed and defective, has a de- 
praved taste, like one who finds a more 
agreeable relish in ashes or cinders than in 
the most wholesome food. As we must ac- ' 
knowledge the taste of the palate to be de- 
praved in this case, there is the same reason 
to think the taste of the mind depraved in 
the other. 

There is therefore a just and rational 
taste, and there is a depraved and corrupted 
taste. For it is too evident, that, by bad 
education, bad habits, and wrong associa- 
tions, men may acquire a relish for nasti- 
ness, for rudeness, and ill-breeding, and for 
many other deformities. To say that such 
a taste is not vitiated, is no less absurd than 
to say, that the sickly girl who delights in 
eating charcoal and tobacco-pipes, has as 
just and natural a taste as when she is in 
perfect health. 

4. The force of custom, of fancy, and of 
casual associations, is very great both upon 
the external and internal taste. An Eski- 
maux can regale himself with a draught of 
whale-oil, and a Canadian can feast upon a 
dog. A Kamschatkadale lives upon putrid 
fish, and is sometimes reduced to eat the 
bark of trees. The taste of rum, or of green 
tea, is at first as nauseous as that of ipeca- 
cuan, to some persons, who may be brought 
by use to relish what they once found so 
disagreeable. [718] 

When we see such varieties in the taste 
of the palate produced by custom and as- 
sociations, and some, perhaps, by constitu- 
tion, we may be the less surprised that the 
same causes should produce like varieties 
in the taste of beauty ; that the African 
should esteem thick lips and a flat nose ; 
that other nations should draw out their 
ears, till they hang over their shoulders ; 
that in one nation ladies should paint their 
faces, and in another should make them 
shine with grease. 

5. Those who conceive that there is no 
standard in nature by which taste may be 
regulated, and that the common proverb, 
" That there ought to be no dispute about 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay vm. 



taste," is to be taken in the utmost latitude, 
go upon slender and insufficient ground. 
The same arguments might be used with 
equal force against any standard of truth. 

Whole nations by the force of prejudice 
are brought to believe the grossest absurdi- 
ties ; and why should it be thought that the 
taste is less capable of being perverted than 
the judgment ? It must indeed be acknow- 
ledged, that men differ more in the faculty 
of taste than in what we commonly call 
judgment ; and therefore it may be expected 
that they should be more liable to have their 
taste corrupted in matters of beauty and 
deformity, than their judgment in matters 
of truth and error. 

If we make due allowance for this, we 
shall see that it is as easy to account for 
the variety of tastes, though there be in 
nature a standard of true beauty, and con- 
sequently of good taste, as it is to account 
for the variety and contrariety of opinions, 
though there be in nature a standard of 
of truth, and, consequently, of right judg- 
ment. [719] 

6. Nay, if we speak accurately and 
strictly, we shall find that, in every opera- 
tion of taste, there is judgment implied. 

When a man pronounces a poem or a 
palace to be beautiful, he affirms something 
of that poem or that palace ; and every 
affirmation or denial expresses judgment. 
For we cannot better define judgment, than 
by saying that it is an affirmation or denial 
of one thing concerning another. I had 
occasion to shew, when treating of judg- 
ment, that it is implied in every perception 
of oar external senses. There is an imme- 
diate conviction and belief of the existence 
of the quality perceived, whether it be 
colour, or sound, or figure ; and the same 
thing holds in the perception of beauty or 
deformity. 

If it be said that the perception of beauty 
is merely a feeling in the mind that per- 
ceives, without any belief of excellence in 
the object, the necessary consequence of 
this opinion is, that when I say Virgil's 
" Georgics" is a beautiful poem, I mean not 
to say anything of the poem, but only some- 
thing concerning myself and my feelings. 
Why should I use a language that expresses 
the contrary of what I mean ? 

My language, according to the necessary 
rules of construction, can bear no other 
meaning but this, that there is something 
in the poem, and not in me, which I call 
beauty. Even those who hold beauty to 
be merely a feeling in the person that per- 
ceives it, find themselves under a necessity 
of expressing themselves as if beauty were 
solely a quality of the object, and not of 
the percipient. 



No reason can be given why all man- 
kind should express themselves thus, but that 
they believe what they say. It is there- 
fore contrary to the universal sense of 
mankind, expressed by their language, that 
beauty is not really in the object, but is 
merely a feeling in the person who is said 
to perceive it. Philosophers should be very 
cautious in opposing the common sense 
of mankind ; for, when they do, they rarely 
miss going wrong. [720] 

Our judgment of beauty is not indeed a 
dry and unaffecting judgment, like that- of 
a mathematical or metaphysical truth. By 
the constitution of our nature, it is accom- 
panied with an agreeble feeling or emotion, 
for which we have no other name but the 
sense of beauty. This sense of beauty, like 
the perceptions of our other senses, implies 
not only a feeling, but an opinion of some 
quality in the object which occasions that 
feeling. 

In objects that please the taste, we always 
judge that there is some real excellence, 
some superiority to those that do not 
please. In some cases, that superior ex- 
cellence is distinctly perceived, and can 
be pointed out ; in other cases, we have 
only a general notion of some excellence 
which we cannot describe. Beauties of the 
former kind may be compared to the 
primary qualities perceived by the external 
senses ; those of the latter kind, to- the 
secondary. 

7- Beauty or deformity in an object, re- 
sults from its nature or structure. To per- 
ceive the beauty, therefore, we must per- 
ceive the nature or structure from which it 
results. In this the internal sense differs 
from the external. Our external senses 
may discover qualities which do not depend 
upon any antecedent perception. Thus, I 
can hear the sound of a bell, though I never 
perceived anything else belonging to it. 
But it is impossible to perceive the beauty 
of an object without perceiving the object, 
or, at least, conceiving it. On this account, 
Dr Hutcheson called the senses of beauty 
and harmony reflex or secondary senses ; 
because the beauty cannot be perceived 
unless the object be perceived by some other 
power of the mind. Thus, the sense of 
harmony and melody in sounds supposes 
the external sense of hearing, and is a kind 
of secondary to it. A man born deaf may 
be a good judge of beauties of another kind, 
but can have no notion of melody or har- 
mony. The like may be said of beau- 
ties in colouring and in figure, which can 
never be perceived without the senses by 
which colour and figure are perceived. 
[721] 

[719-721J 



".] 



OF NOVELTY. 



493 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE OBJECTS OP TASTE ; AND, FIRST, OF 
NOVELTY. 

A philosophical analysis of the objects 
of taste is like applying the anatomical knife 
to a fine face. The design of the philoso- 
pher, as well as of the anatomist, is not to 
gratify taste, but to improve knowledge. 
The reader ought to be aware of this, that 
he may not entertain an expectation in 
which he will be disappointed. 

By the objects of taste, I mean those 
qualities or attributes of things which are, 
by Nature, adapted to please a good taste. 
Mr Addison, and Dr Akenside after him, 
have reduced them to three— to wit, novelty, 
grandeur, and beauty. This division is 
sufficient for all I intend to say upon the 
subject, and therefore I shall adopt it — 
observing only, that beauty is often taken 
in so extensive a sense as to comprehend 
all the objects of taste ; yet all the authors 
I have met with, who have given a division 
of the objects of taste, make beauty one 
species. 

I take the reason of this to be, that we 
have specific names for some of the quali- 
ties that please the taste, but not for all ; 
and therefore all those fall under the gene- 
ral name of beauty, for which there is no 
specific name in the division. 

There are, indeed, so many species of 
beauty, that it would be as difficult to enu- 
merate them perfectly, as to enumerate all 
the tastes we perceive by the palate. Nor 
does there appear to me sufficient reason 
for making, as some very ingenious authors 
have done, as many different internal senses 
as there are different species of beauty or 
deformity. [722] 

The division of our external senses is 
taken from the organs of perception, and 
not from the qualities perceived. We have 
not the same means of dividing the inter- 
nal ; because, though some kinds of beauty 
belong only to objects of the eye, and others 
to objects of the ear, there are many which 
we cannot refer to any bodily organ ; and 
therefore I conceive every division that has 
been made of our internal senses to be in 
some degree arbitrary. They may be made 
more or fewer, according as we have dis- 
tinct names for the various kinds of beauty 
and deformity ; and I suspect the most 
copious languages have not names for them 
all. 

Novelty is not properly a quality of the 
thing to which we attribute it, far less is 
it a sensation in the mind to which it is 
new ; it is a relation which the thing has 
to the knowledge of the person. What is 
new to one man, may not be so to another ; 
[722, 723] 



what is new this moment, may be familiar 
to the same person some time hence. When 
an object is first brought to our know- 
ledge, it is new, whether it be agreeable 
or not. 

It is evident, therefore, with regard to 
novelty, (whatever may be said of other 
objects of taste,) that it is not merely a 
sensation in the mind of him to whom the 
thing is new ; it is a real relation which 
the thing has to his knowledge at that 
time. 

But we are so constituted, that what is 
new to us commonly gives pleasure upon 
that account, if it be not in itself disagree- 
able. It rouses our attention, and occa- 
sions an agreeable exertion of our facul- 
ties. 

The pleasure we receive from novelty in 
objects has so great influence in human 
life, that it well deserves the attention of 
philosophers ; and several ingenious authors 
— particularly Dr Gerard, in his " Essay on 
Taste" — have, I think, successfully account- 
ed for it, from the principles of the human 
constitution. [723] 

We can perhaps conceive a being so 
made, that his happiness consists in a con- 
tinuance of the same unvaried sensations or 
feelings, without any active exertion on his 
part. Whether this be possible or not, it 
is evident that man is not such a being ; 
his good consists in the vigorous exertion 
of his active and intellective powers upon 
their proper objects ; he is made for action 
and progress, and cannot be happy without 
it ; his enjoyments seem to be given by 
Nature, not so much for their own sake, as 
to encourage the exercise of his various 
powers. That tranquillity of soul in which 
some place human happiness, is not a dead 
rest, but a regular progressive motion. 

Such is the constitution of man by the 
appointment of Nature. This constitution 
is perhaps a part of the imperfection of our 
nature ; but it is wisely adapted to our 
state, which is not intended to be stationary, 
but progressive. The eye is not satiated 
with seeing, nor the ear with hearing; 
something is always wanted. Desire and 
hope never cease, but remain to spur us on 
to something yet to be acquired; and, if 
they could cease, human happiness must 
end with them. That our desire and hope 
be properly directed, is our part ; that they 
can never be extinguished, is the work of 
Nature. 

It is this that makes human life so busy 
a scene. Man must be doing something, 
good or bad, trifling or important ; and he 
must vary the employment of his facul- 
ties, or their exercise will become languid, 
and the pleasure that attends it sicken of 
course. 

The notions of enjoyment, and of activity, 



494 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay viii. 



considered abstractly, are no doubt very 
different, and we cannot perceive a necessary 
connection between them. But, in our con- 
stitution, they are so connected by the 
wisdom of Nature, that they must go hand 
in hand ; and the first must be led and 
supported by the last. [724] 

An object at first, perhaps, gave much 
pleasure, while attention was directed to it 
with vigour. But attention cannot be long 
confined to one unvaried object, nor can it 
be carried round in the same narrow circle. 
Curiosity is a capital principle in the human 
constitution, and its food must be what is 
in some respect new. What is said of the 
Athenians may, in some degree, be applied 
to all mankind, That their time is spent 
in hearing, or telling, or doing some new 
thing. 

Into this part of the human constitution, 
I think, we may resolve the pleasure we 
have from novelty in objects. 

Curiosity is commonly strongest in child- 
ren and in young persons, and accordingly 
novelty pleases them most. In all ages, in 
proportion as novelty gratifies curiosity, and 
occasions a vigorous exertion of any of our 
mental powers in attending to the new ob- 
ject, in the same proportion it gives plea- 
sure. In advanced life, the indolent and 
inactive have the strongest passion for news, 
as a relief from a painful vacuity of thought. 

But the pleasure derived from new objects, 
in many cases, is not owing solely or chiefly 
to their being new, but to some other cir- 
cumstance that gives them value. The new 
fashion in dress, furniture, equipage, and 
other accommodations of life, gives plea- 
sure, not so much, as I apprehend, because 
it is. new, as because it is a sign of rank, 
and distinguishes a man from the vulgar. 

In some things novelty is due, and the 
want of it a real imperfection. Thus, if an 
author adds to the number of books with 
which the public is already overloaded, we 
expect from him something new ; and, if he 
says nothing but what has been said before 
in as agreeable a manner, we are justly 
disgusted. [725] 

When novelty is altogether separated 
from the conception of worth and utility, it 
makes but a slight impression upon a truly 
correct taste. Every discovery in nature, 
in the arts, and in the sciences, has a real 
value, and gives a rational pleasure to a 
good taste. But things that have nothing 
to recommend them but novelty, are fit 
only to entertain children, or those who are 
distressed from a vacuity of thought. This 
quality of objects may therefore be com- 
pared to the cypher in arithmetic, which 
adds greatly to the value of significant 
figures ; but, when put by itself, signifies 
nothing at all. 



CHAPTER III. 



OF GRANDEUR. 



The qualities which pk ase the taste are 
not more various in themselves than are 
the emotions and feelings with which they 
affect our minds. 

Things new and uncommon affect us with 
a pleasing surprise, which rouses and invi- 
gorates our attention to the object. But 
this emotion soon flags, if there is nothing 
but novelty to give it continuance, and 
leaves no effect upon the mind. 

The emotion raised by grand objects is 
awful, solemn, and serious. 

Of all objects of contemplation, the Su- 
preme Being, is the most grand. His 
eternity, his immensity, his irresistible power, 
his infinite knowledge and unerring wisdom, 
his inflexible justice and rectitude, his su- 
preme government, conducting all the 
movements of this vast universe to the no- 
blest ends and in the wisest manner — are 
objects which fill the utmost capacity of the 
soul, and reach far beyond its comprehension. 

The emotion which this grandest of all 
objects raises in the human mind, is what 
we call devotion ; a serious recollected tem- 
per, which inspires magnanimity, and dis- 
poses to the most heroic acts of virtue. [726] 

The emotion produced by other objects 
which may be called grand, though iu an 
inferior degree, is, in its nature and in its 
effects, similar to that of devotion. It dis- 
poses to seriousness, elevates the mind 
above its usual state, to a kind of enthusi- 
asm, and inspires magnanimity, and a con- 
tempt of what is mean. 

Such, I conceive, is the emotion which 
the contemplation of grand objects raises in 
us. We are next to consider what this 
grandeur in objects is. 

To me it seems to be nothing else but 
such a degree of excellence, in one kind or 
another, as merits our admiration. 

There are some attributes of mind which 
have a real and intrinsic excellence, com- 
pared with their contraries, and which, in 
every degree, are the natural objects of 
esteem, but, in an uncommon degree, are ob- 
jects of admiration. We put a value upon 
them because they are intrinsically valuable 
and excellent. 

The spirit of modern philosophy would 
indeed lead us to think, that the worth and 
value we put upon things is only a sensation 
in our minds, and not anything inherent in 
the object ; and that we might have been so 
constituted as to put the highest value upon 
the things which we now despise, and to 
despise the qualities which we now highly 
esteem. 

[724-726 j 



CHAP. III. ]J 



OF GRANDEUR. 



495 



It gives me pleasure to observe, that Dr 
Price, in his " Review of the Questions 
concerning Morals," strenuously opposes 
this opinion, as well as that which resolves 
moral right and wrong into a sensation in 
the mind of the spectator. That judicious 
author saw the consequences which these 
opinions draw after them, and has traced 
them to their source — to wit, the account 
given by Mr Locke, and adopted by the gen- 
erality of modern philosophers, of the ori- 
gin of all our ideas, which account he shews 
to be very defective. [727] 

This proneness to resolve everything into 
feelings and sensations, is an extreme into 
which we have been led by the desire of 
avoiding an opposite extreme, as common 
in the ancient philosophy. 

At first, me are prone by nature and by 
habit to give all their attention to things 
external. Their notions of the mind, and 
its operations, are formed from some analogy 
they bear to objects of sense ; and an ex- 
ternal existence is ascribed to things which 
are only conceptions or feelings of the 
mind. 

This spirit prevailed much in the philo- 
sophy both of Plato and of Aristotle, and 
produced the mysterious notions of eternal 
and self-existent ideas, of materia prima, of 
substantial forms, and others of the like 
nature. 

From the time of Des Cartes, philosophy 
took a contrary turn. That great man dis- 
covered, that many things supposed to have 
an external existence, were only conceptions 
or feelings of the mind. This track has 
been pursued by his successors to such an 
extreme as to resolve everything into sens- 
ations, feelings, and ideas in the mind, and 
to leave nothing external at all. 

The Peripatetics thought that heat and 
cold which we feel to be qualities of external 
objects. The moderns make heat and cold 
to be sensations only, and allow no real 
quality of body to be called by that name : 
and the same judgment they have formed 
with regard to all secondary qualities. 

So far Des Cartes and Mr Locke went. 
Their successors being put into this track 
of converting into feelings things that were 
believed to have an external existence, found 
that extension, solidity, figure, and all the 
primary qualities of body, are sensations or 
feelings of the mind ; and that the material 
world is a phsenomenon only, and has no 
existence but in our mind. [728] 

It was then a very natural progress to con- 
ceive, that beauty, harmony, and grandeur, 
the objects of taste, as well as right and 
wrong, the objects of the moral faculty, are 
nothing but feelings of the mind. 

Those who are acquainted with the 
writings of modern philosophers, can easily 
trace this doctrine of feelings, from Des 
[727-729] 



Cartes down to Mr Hume, who put the 
finishing stroke to it, by making truth and 
error to be feelings of the mind, and belief 
to be an operation of the sensitive part of 
our nature. 

To return to our subject, if we hearken 
to the dictates of common sense, we must be 
convinced that there is real excellence in 
some things, whatever our feelings or our 
constitution be. 

It depends no doubt upon our constitu- 
tion, whether we do or do not perceive ex- 
cellence where it really is : but the object 
has its excellence from its own constitution, 
and not from ours. 

The common judgment of mankind in this 
matter sufficiently appears in the language 
of all nations, which uniformly ascribes ex- 
cellence, grandeur, and beauty to the object, 
and not to the mind that perceives it. And 
I believe in this, as in most other things, 
we shall find the common judgment of man- 
kind and true philosophy not to be at va- 
riance. 

Is not power in its nature more excel- 
lent than weakness ; knowledge than igno- 
rance ; wisdom than folly ; fortitude than 
pusillanimity ? 

Is there no intrinsic excellence in self- 
command, in generosity, in public spirit ? 
Is not friendship a better affection of mind 
than hatred, a noble emulation than envy ? 
[729] 

Let us suppose, if possible, a being so 
constituted as to have a high respect for 
ignorance, weakness, and folly; to venerate 
cowardice, malice, and envy, and to hold 
the contrary qualities in contempt ; to have 
an esteem for lying and falsehood ; and to 
love most those who imposed upon him, 
and used him worst. Could we believe 
such a constitution to be anything else than 
madness and delirium ? It is impossible. 
We can as easily conceive a constitution, 
by which one should perceive two and three 
to make fifteen, or a part to be greater than 
the whole. 

Every one who attends to the operations 
of his own mind will find it to be certainly 
true, as it is the common belief of mankind, 
that esteem is led by opinion, and that every 
person draws our esteem, as far only as he 
appears either to reason or fancy to be 
amiable and worthy. 

There is therefore a real intrinsic excel- 
lence in some qualities of mind, as in power, 
knowledge, wisdom, virtue, magnanimity. 
These, in every degree, merit esteem ; but 
in an uncommon degree they merit admir- 
ation ; and that which merits admiration 
we call grand. 

In the contemplation of uncommon ex- 
cellence, the mind feels a noble enthusiasm, 
which disposes it to the imitation of what it 
admires. 



496 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay VIII. 



When we contemplate the character of 
Cato — his greatness of soul, his superiority 
to pleasure, to toil, and to danger ; his ar- 
dent zeal for the liberty of his country ; 
when we see him standing unmoved in mis- 
fortunes, the last pillar of the liberty of 
Rome, and falling nobly in his country's 
ruin — who would not wish to be Cato rather 
than Caesar in all his triumph ? [730] 

Such a spectacle of a great sOUl strug- 
gling with misfortune, Seneca thought not 
unworthy of the attention of Jupiter him- 
self, "Ecce spectaculum Deo dignum, ad 
quod respiciat Jupiter suo operi intentus, 
vir fortis cum mala fortuna compositus." 

As the Deity is, of all objects of thought, 
the most grand, the descriptions given in 
holy writ of his attributes and works, even 
when clothed in simple expression, are 
acknowledged to be sublime. The expres- 
sion of Moses, " And God said, Let there 
be light, and there was light,"* has not 
escaped the notice of Longinus, a Heathen 
critic, as an example of the sublime. 

What we call sublime in description, or 
in speech of any kind, is a proper expres- 
sion of the admiration and enthusiasm which 
the subject produces in the mind of the 
speaker. If this admiration and enthu- 
siasm appears to be just, it carries the 
nearer along with it involuntarily, and by 
a kind of violence rather than by cool con- 
viction : for no passions are so infectious as 
those which hold of enthusiasm. 

But, on the other hand, if the passion of 
the speaker appears to be in no degree jus- 
tified by the subject or the occasion, it pro- 
duces in the judicious hearer no other emo- 
tion but ridicule and contempt. 

The true sublime cannot be produced 
solely by art in the composition ; it must 
take its rise from grandeur in the subject, 
and a corresponding emotion raised in the 
mind of the speaker. A proper exhibition 
of these, though it should be artless, is 
irresistible, like fire thrown into the midst 
of combustible matter. [731] 

When we contemplate the earth, the sea, 
the planetary system, the universe, these 
are vast objects; it requires a stretch of 
imagination to grasp them in our minds. 
But they appear truly grand, and merit the 
highest admiration, when we consider them 
as the work of God, who, in the simple 
style of scripture, stretched out the heavens, 
and laid the foundation of the earth ; or, in 
the poetical language of Milton — 

" In his hand 
He took the golden compasses, prepar'd 
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe 
This universe and all created thiugs. 
One foot he centr'd, and the other turn'd 
Round thro' the vast profundity obscure; 



* Better translated—" Be there light, and light 
there was " — H. 



And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy boundi, 
This be thy just circumference, O world." 

When we contemplate the world of Epi- 
curus, and conceive the universe to be a 
fortuitous jumble of atoms, there is nothing 
grand in this idea. The clashing of atoms 
by blind chance has nothing in it fit to raise 
our conceptions, or to elevate the mind. 
But the regular structure of a vast system 
of beings, produced by creating power, and 
governed by the best laws which perfect 
wisdom and goodness could contrive, is a 
spectacle which elevates the understanding, 
and fills the soul with devout admiration. 

A great work is a work of great power, 
great wisdom, and great goodness, well con- 
trived for some important end. But power, 
wisdom, and goodness, are properly the at- 
tributes of mind only. They are ascribed to 
the work figuratively, but are really inherent 
in the author : and by the same figure, the 
grandeur is ascribed to the work, but is 
properly inherent in the mind that made it. 

Some figures of speech are so natural and 
so common in all languages, that we are led 
to think them literal and proper expressions. 
Thus an action is called brave, virtuous, 
generous ; but it is evident, that valour, 
virtue, generosity, are the attributes of per- 
sons only, and not of actions. In the action 
considered abstractly, there is neither val- 
our, nor virtue, nor generosity. The same 
action done from a different motive may 
deserve none of those epithets. [732] The 
change in this case is not in the action, but 
in the agent ; yet,in all languages, generosity 
and other moral qualities are ascribed to 
actions. By a figure, we assign to the effect 
a quality which is inherent only in the 
cause. 

By the same figure, we ascribe to a work 
that grandeur which properly is inherent in 
the mind of the author. 

When we consider the " Iliad" as the 
work of the poet, its sublimity was really 
in the mind of Homer. He conceived 
great characters, great actions, and great 
events, in a manner suitable to their nature, 
and with those emotions which they are 
naturally fitted to produce ; and he conveys 
his conceptions and his emotions by the 
most proper signs. The grandeur of his 
thoughts is reflected to our eye by his work, 
and, therefore, it is justly called a grand 
work. 

When we consider the things presented 
to our mind in the " Iliad" without regard 
to the poet, the grandeur, is properly in 
Hector and Achilles, and the other great 
personages, human and divine, brought 
upon the stage. 

Next to the Deity and his works, we ad- 
mire great talents and heroic virtue in men, 
whether represented in history or in fiction. 
The virtues of Cato, Aristides, Socrates, 
[730-732] 



.P. III.] 



OF GRANDEUR. 



497 



Marcus Aurelius, are truly grand. Extra- 
ordinary talents and genius, whether in 
poets, orators, philosophers, or lawgivers, are 
objects of admiration, and therefore grand. 
We find writers of taste seized with a kind 
of enthusiasm in the description of such 
personages. 

What a grand idea does Virgil give of the 
power of eloquence, when he compares the 
tempest of the sea, suddenly calmed by the 
command of Neptune, to a furious sedition 
in a great city, quelled at once by a man of 
authority and eloquence. [733] 

" Sic ait, ac dicto citius tumida aequora placat : 
Ac veluti magno in populo, si forte coorta est 
Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus ; 
Jamque faces et saxa volant, furor arma ministrat ; 
Turn pietate gravem, et meritis, si forte virum quem 
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant. 
Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet. 
Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor." 

The wonderful genius of Sir Isaac New- 
ton, and his sagacity in discovering the laws 
of Nature, is admirably expressed in that 
short but sublime epitaph by Pope : — 

" Na'ure and Nature's laws lay hid in night ; 
God said, Let Newton be— and all was light." 

Hitherto we have found grandeur only in 
qualities of mind ; but, it may be asked, Is 
there no real grandeur in material objects ? 

It will, perhaps, appear extravagant to 
deny that there is ; yet it deserves to be 
considered, whether all the grandeur we 
ascribe to objects of sense be not derived 
from something intellectual, of which they 
are the effects or signs, or to which they bear 
some relation or analogy. 

Besides the relations of effect and cause, 
of sign and thing signified, there are innu- 
merable similitudes and analogies between 
things of very different nature, which lead 
us to connect them in our imagination, and 
to ascribe to the one what properly belongs 
to the other. 

Every metaphor in language is an instance 
of this ; and it must be remembered, that a 
very great part of language, which we now 
account proper, was originally metaphorical ; 
for the metaphorical meaning becomes the 
proper, as soon as it becomes the most 
usual ; much more, when that which was at 
first the proper meaning falls into disuse. 
[734] 

The poverty of language, no doubt, con- 
tributes in part to the use of metaphor; 
and, therefore, we find the most barren and 
uncultivated languages the most metaphori- 
cal. But the most copious language may 
be called barren, compared with the fertility 
of human conceptions, and can never, with- 
out the use of figures, keep pace with the 
variety of their delicate modifications. 

But another cause of the use of metaphor 
is, that we find pleasure in discovering rela- 
tions, similitudes, analogies, and even con- 
trasts, that are not obvious to every eye. 
733-735] 



All figurative speech presents something of 
this kind ; and the beauty of poetical lan- 
guage seems to be derived in a great mea- 
sure from this source. 

Of all figurative language, that is the most 
common, the most natural, and the most 
agreeable, which either gives a body, if we 
may so speak, to things intellectual, and 
clothes them with visible qualities; or which, 
on the other hand, gives intellectual qualities 
to the objects of sense. 

To beings of more exalted faculties, intel- 
lectual objects may, perhaps, appear to most 
advantage in their naked simplicity. But 
we can hardly conceive them but by means 
of some analogy they bear to the objects of 
sense. The names we give them are almost 
all metaphorical or analogical. 

Thus, the names of grand and sublime, as 
well as their opposites, mean and low, are 
evidently borrowed from the dimensions of 
body ; yet, it must be acknowledged, that 
many things are truly grand and sublime, 
to which we cannot ascribe the dimensions 
of height and extension. 

Some analogy there is, without doubt, be- 
tween greatness of dimension, which is an 
object of external sense, and that grandeur 
which is an object of taste. On account of 
this analogy, the last borrows its name from 
the first ; and, the name being common, 
leads us to conceive that there is something 
common in the nature of the things. [735] 

But we shall find many qualities of mind, 
denoted by names taken from some quality 
of body to which they have some analogy, 
without anything common in their nature. 

Sweetness and austerity, simplicity and 
duplicity, rectitude and crookedness, are 
names common to certain qualities of mind, 
and to qualities of body to which they have 
some analogy ; yet he would err greatly who 
ascribed to a body that sweetness or that 
simplicity which are the qualities of mind. 
In like manner, greatness and meanness 
are names common to qualities perceived 
by the external sense, and to qualities 
perceived by taste ; yet he may be in an 
error, who ascribes to the objects of sense 
that greatness or that meanness which is 
only an object of taste. 

As intellectual objects are made more 
level to our apprehension by giving them a 
visible form ; so the objects of sense are 
dignified and made more august, by ascrib- 
ing to them intellectual qualities which have 
some analogy to those they really possess. 
The sea rages, the sky lowers, the meadows 
smile, the rivulets murmur, the breezes 
whisper, the soil is grateful or ungrateful — 
such expressions are so familiar in common 
language, that they are scarcely accounted 
poetical or figurative ; but they give a kind 
of dignity to inanimate objects, and make 
our conception of them more agreeable. 
2k 



498 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay mil 



When we consider matter as an inert, 
extended, divisible, and movable substance, 
there seems to be nothing in these qualities 
which we can call grand ; and when weascribe 
grandeur to any portion of matter, however 
modified, may it not borrow this quality 
from something intellectual, of which it is 
the effect, or sign, or instrument, or to 
which it bears some analogy ? or, perhaps, 
because it produces in the mind an emotion 
that has some resemblance to that admira- 
tion which truly grand objects raise ? [736] 

A very elegant writer on the sublime and 
beautiful,* makes everything grand or sub- 
lime that is terrible. Might he not be led 
to this by the similarity between dread and 
admiration ? Both are grave and solemn 
passions ; both make a strong impression 
upon the mind ; and both are very infec- 
tious. But they differ specifically, in this 
respect, that admiration supposes some un- 
common excellence in its object, which 
dread does not. We may admire what we 
see no reason to dread ; and we may dread 
what we do not admire. In dread, there is 
nothing of that enthusiasm which naturally 
accompanies admiration, and is a chief in- 
gredient of the emotion raised by what is 
truly grand or sublime. 

Upon the whole, I humbly apprehend 
that true grandeur is such a degree of ex- 
cellence as is fit to raise an enthusiastical 
admiration ; that this grandeur is found, 
originally and properly, in qualities of mind ; 
that it is discerned, in objects of sense, only 
by reflection, as the light we perceive in the 
moon and planets is truly the light of the 
sun ; and that those who look for grandeur 
in mere matter, seek the living among the 
dead. 

If this be a mistake, it ought, at least, to 
be granted, that the grandeur which we 
perceive in qualities of mind, ought to have 
a different name from that which belongs 
properly to the objects of sense, as they are 
very different in their nature, and produce 
very different emotions in the mind of the 
spectator. [737] 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF BEAUTY. 

Beauty is found in things so various 
and so very different in nature, that it is 
difficult to say wherein it consists, or what 
there can be common to all the objects in 
which it is, found. 

Of the objects of sense, we find beauty in 
colour, in sound, in form, in motion. There 
are beauties of speech, and beauties of 
thought ; beauties in the arts, and in the 

* Burke.— H. 



sciences ; beauties in actions, in affections, 
and in characters. 

In things so different and so unlike is 
there any quality, the same in all, which we 
may call by the name of beauty ? What 
can it be that is common to the thought of 
a mind and the form of a piece of matter, 
to an abstract theorem and a stroke of wit ? 

I am indeed unable to conceive any qua- 
lity in all the different things that are called 
beautiful, that is the same in them all. 
There seems to be no identity, nor even 
similarity, between the beauty of a theorem 
and the beauty of a piece of music, though 
both may be beautiful. The kinds of beauty 
seem to be as various as the objects to which 
it is ascribed. 

But why should things so different be 
called by the same name ? This cannot be 
without a reason. If there be nothing com- 
mon in the things themselves, they must 
have some common relation to us, or to 
something else, which leads us to give them 
the same name. [738] 

All the objects we call beautiful agree in 
two things, which seem to concur in our 
sense of beauty. First, When they are 
perceived, or even imagined, they produce 
a certain agreeable emotion or feeling in the 
mind ; and, secondly, This agreeable emotion 
is accompanied with an opinion or belief of 
their having some perfection or excellence 
belonging to them. 

Whether the pleasure we feel in contem- 
plating beautiful objects may have any ne- 
cessary connection with the belief of their 
excellence, or whether that pleasure be con- 
joined with this belief, by the good pleasure 
only of our Maker, I will not determine. 
The reader may see Dr Price's sentiments 
upon this subject, which merit considera- 
tion, in the second chapter of his " Review 
of the Questions concerning Morals." 

Though we may be able to conceive these 
two ingredients of our sense of beauty dis- 
joined, this affords no evidence that they 
have no necessary connection. It has in- 
deed been maintained, that whatever we can 
conceive, is possible : but I endeavoured, 
in treating of conception, to shew, that this 
opinion, though very common, is a mistake. 
There may be, and probably are, man\ 
necessary connections of things in nature, 
which we are too dim-sighted to discover. 

The emotion produced by beautiful ob- 
jects is gay and pleasant. It sweetens and 
humanises the temper, is friendly to every 
benevolent affection, and tends to allay 
sullen and angry passions. It enlivens the 
mind, and disposes it to other agreeable 
emotions, such as those of love, hope, and 
joy. It gives a value to the object, ab- 
stracted from its utility. 

In things that may be possessed as pro- 
perty, beauty greatly enhances the price. 
,[736-738] 



(HAP IV.] 



OF BEAUTY. 



499 



A beautiful dog or horse, a beautiful coach 
or house, a beautiful picture or prospect, is 
valued by its owner and by others, not only 
for its utility, but for its beauty. [739] 

If the beautiful object be a person, his 
company and conversation are, on that ac- 
count, the more agreeable, and we are dis- 
posed to love and esteem him. Even in a 
perfect stranger, it is a powerful recom- 
mendation, and disposes us to favour and 
think well of him, if of our own sex, and 
still more if of the other. 

" There is nothing," says Mr Addison, 
" that makes its way more directly to the soul 
than beauty, which immediately diffuses a 
secret satisfaction and complacence through 
the imagination, and gives a finishing to 
anything that is great and uncommon. 
The very first discovery of it strikes the 
mind with an inward joy, and spreads a 
cheerfulness and delight through all its 
faculties." 

As we ascribe beauty, not only to per- 
sons, but to inanimate things, we give the 
name of love or liking to the emotion, which 
beauty, in both these kinds of objects, 
produces. It is evident, however, that 
liking to a person is a very different affec- 
tion of mind from liking to an inanimate 
thing. The first always implies benevo- 
lence ; but what is inanimate cannot be the 
object of benevolence- The two affections, 
however different, have a resemblance in 
some respects ; and, on account of that 
resemblance, have the same name. And 
perhaps beauty, in these two different kinds 
of objects, though it has one name, may be 
as different in its nature as the emotions 
which it produces in us. 

Besides the agreeable emotion which 
beautiful objects produce in the mind of 
the spectator, they produce also an opinion 
or judgment of some perfection or excel- 
lence in the object. This I take to be a 
second ingredient in our sense of beauty, 
though it seems not to be admitted by 
modern philosophers. [740] 

The ingenious Dr Hutcheson, who per- 
ceived some of the defects of Mr Locke's 
system, and made very important improve- 
ments upon it, seems to have been carried 
away by it, in his notion of beauty. In 
his " Inquiry concerning Beauty," § 1, 
"Let it be observed," says he, "that in the 
following papers, the word beauty is taken 
for the idea raised in us, and the sense of 
beauty for our power of receiving that idea." 
And again — " Only let it be observed, that, 
by absolute or original beauty, is not under- 
stood any quality supposed to be in the 
object which should, of itself, be beautiful, 
without relation to any mind which per- 
ceives it : for beauty, like other names of 
sensible ideas, properly denotes the per- 
ception of some mind ; so cold, hot, sweet, 
[739-741] 



bitter, denote the sensations in our minds, 
to which, perhaps, there is no resemblance 
in the objects which excite these ideas in 
us ; however, we generally imagine other- 
wise. Were there no mind, with a sense 
of beauty, to contemplate objects, I see not 
how they could be called beautiful." 

There is no doubt an analogy between 
the external senses of touch and taste, and 
the internal sense of beauty. This analogy 
led Dr Hutcheson, and other modern phi- 
losophers, to apply to beauty what Des 
Cartes and Locke had taught concerning 
the secondary qualities perceived by the 
external senses. 

Mr Locke's doctrine concerning the se- 
condary qualities of body, is not so much 
an error in judgment as an abuse of words. 
He distinguished very properly between 
the sensations we have of heat and cold, 
and that quality or structure in the body 
which is adapted by Nature to produce 
those sensations in us. He observed very 
justly, that there can be no similitude be- 
tween one of these and the other. They 
have the relation of an effect to its cause, 
but no similitude. This was a very just 
and proper correction of the doctrine of the 
Peripatetics, who taught, that all our sens- 
ations are the very form and image of the 
quality in the object by which they are 
produced. [741] 

What remained to be determined was, 
whether the words, heat and cold, in com- 
mon language, signify the sensations we 
feel, or the qualities of the object which 
are the cause of these sensations. Mr 
Locke made heat and cold to signify only 
the sensations we feel, and not the qualities 
which are the cause of them. And in this, 
I apprehend, lay his mistake. For it is 
evident, from the use of language, that hot 
and cold, sweet and bitter, are attributes of 
external objects, and not of the person who 
perceives them. Hence, it appears a mon- 
strous paradox to say, there is no heat in 
the fire, no sweetness in sugar ; but, when 
explained according to Mr Locke's meaning, 
it is only, like most other paradoxes, an 
abuse of words.* 

The sense of beauty may be analysed in 
a manner very similar to the sense of sweet- 
ness. It is an agreeable feeling or emotion, 
accompanied with an opinion or judgment 
of some excellence in the object, which is 
fitted by Nature to produce that feeling. 

The feeling is, no doubt, in the mind, 
and so also is the judgment we form of the 
object : but this judgment, like all others, 
must be true or false. If it be a true judg- 
ment, there is some real excellence in the 
object. And the use of all languages shews 
that the name of beauty belongs to this ex- 

* See above, p. 205, b, note *.— H. 
2 K 2 



500 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS 



[essay VIII. 



eeilence of the object, and not to the feel- 
ings of the spectator. 

To say that there is, in reality, no beauty 
in those objects in which all men perceive 
beauty, is to attribute to man fallacious 
senses. But we have no ground to think 
so disrespectfully of the Author of our 
being ; the faculties he hath given us are 
not fallacious ; nor is that beauty which 
he hath so liberally diffused over all the 
works of his hands, a mere fancy in us, but 
a real excellence in his works, which express 
the perfection of their Divine Author. 

We have reason to believe, not only that 
the beauties we see in nature are real, and 
not fanciful, but that there are thousands 
which our faculties are too dull to perceive. 
We see many beauties, both of human and 
divine art, which the brute animals are in- 
capable of perceiving ; and superior beings 
may excel us as far in their discernment of 
true beauty as we excel the brutes. [742] 

The man who is skilled in painting or 
statuary sees more of the beauty of a fine 
picture or statue than a common specta- 
tor. The same thing holds in all the fine 
arts. The most perfect works of art have 
a beauty that strikes even the rude and ig- 
norant ; but they see only a small part of 
that beauty which is seen in such works by 
those who understand them perfectly, and 
can produce them. 

This may be applied, with no less justice, 
to the works of Nature. They have a 
beauty that strikes even the ignorant and 
inattentive. But the more we discover of 
their structure, of their mutual relations, 
and of the laws by which they are governed, 
the greater beauty, and the more delightful 
marks of art, wisdom, and goodness, we 
discern. 

Thus the expert anatomist sees number- 
less beautiful contrivances in the structure 
of the human body, which are unknown to 
the ignorant. 

Although the vulgar eye sees much beauty 
in the face of the heavens, and in the various 
motions and changes of the heavenly bodies, 
the expert astronomer, who knows their 
order and distances, their periods, the orbits 
they describe in the vast regions of space, 
and the simple and beautiful laws by which 
their motions are governed, and all the 
appearances of their stations, progressions, 
and retrogradations, their eclipses, occulta- 
tions, and transits are produced — sees a 
beauty, order, and harmony reign through 
the whole planetary system, which delights 
the mind. The eclipses of the sun and 
moon, and the blazing tails of comets, 
which strike terror into barbarous nations, 
furnish the most pleasing entertainment to 
his eve, and a feast to his understanding. 
[743] 

In every part of Nature's works, there 



are numberless beauties, which, on account 
of our ignorance, we are unable to perceive. 
Superior beings may see more than we ; but 
He only who made them, and, upon a re- 
view, pronounced them all to be very good, 
can see all their beauty. 

Our determinations with regard to the 
beauty of objects, may, I think, be distin- 
guished into two kinds ; the first we may 
call instinctive, the other rational. 

Some objects strike us at once, and ap- 
pear beautiful at first sight, without any re- 
flection, without our being able to say why 
we call them beautiful, or being able to spe- 
cify any perfection which justifies our judg- 
ment. Something of this kind there seems 
to be in brute animals, and in children 
before the use of reason ; nor does it end 
with infancy, but continues through life. 

In the plumage of birds and of butterflies, 
in the colours and form of flowers, of shells, 
and of many other objects, we perceive a 
beauty that delights ; but cannot say what 
it is in the object that should produce that 
emotion. 

The beauty of the object may in such 
cases be called an occult quality. We know 
well how it affects our senses ; but what it 
is in itself we know not. But this, as well 
as other occult qualities, is a proper subject 
of philosophical disquisition ; and, by a care- 
ful examination of the objects to which Na- 
ture hath given this amiable quality, we 
may perhaps discover some real excellence 
in the object, or, at least, some valuable 
purpose that is served by the effect which 
it produces upon us. 

This instinctive sense of beauty, in differ- 
ent species of animals, may differ as much 
as the external sense of taste, and in each 
species be adapted to its manner of life. By 
this perhaps the various tribes are led to 
associate with their kind, to dwell among 
certain objects rather than others, and to 
construct their habitation in a particular 
manner. [744] 

There seem likewise to be varieties in 
the sense of beauty in the individuals of the 
same species, by which they are directed in 
the choice of a mate, and in the love and 
care of their offspring. 

"We see," says Mr Addison, "that 
every different species of sensible creatures 
has its different notions of beauty, and that 
each of them is most affected with the 
beauties of its own kind. This is nowhere 
more remarkable than in birds of the same 
shape and proportion, where we often see 
the mate determined in his courtship by the 
single grain or tincture of a feather, and 
never discovering any charms but in the 
colour of its own species." 
«« Scit thalamo servare fidcra, sanctasque veretur 
Connubii leges ; non ilium in pectore candor 
Sollicitat niveus ; neque pravum accendit amo- 
rem 

[742-744] 



v.] 



OF BEAUTY. 



501 



Splendida lanugo, vel honesta in vertice crista ; 
Purpureusve nitor pennarum ; ast agmina late 
Fceminea explorat cautus, maculasque requirit 
Cognatas, paribusque interlita c rpora guttis : 
Ni faceret, pictis sylvam circura undique mons- 

tris 
Confusam aspiceres vulgo, partusque biformes, 
Et genus ambiguum, et veneris monumenta ne- 

fanda?. 

" Hinc raerula in nigro se oblectat nigra marito; 
Hinc socium lasciva petit philomela canorum, 
Agnoscitque pare; sonitus ; hinc noclua tetrara 
Canitiem alarum, etglaucos miratur ocellos. 
Nempe sibi semper constat, crescitqu- quotannis 
Laacida progenies., castos contes.-a parentes : 
Vere novo exultat, plumasque decora j: vent us 
Explicat ad solem, patriisquecoloribus ardet." 

In the human kind there are varieties in 
the taste of beauty, of which we can no 
more assign a reason than of the variety of 
their features, though it is easy to perceive 
that very important ends are answered by 
both. These varieties are most observable 
in the judgments we form of the features of 
the other sex ; and in this the intention of 
nature is most apparent. [745] 

As far as our determinations of the com- 
parative beauty of objects are instinctive, 
they are no subject of reasoning or of criti- 
cism ; they are purely the gift of nature, 
and we have no standard by which they may 
be measured. 

But there are judgments of beauty that 
may be called rational, being grounded on 
some agreeable quality of the object which is 
distinctly conceived, and may be specified. 
This distinction between a rational judg- 
ment of beauty and that which is instinc- 
tive, may be illustrated by an instance. 

In a heap of pebbles, one that is remark- 
able for brilliancy of colour and regularity 
of figure, will be picked out of the heap by a 
child. He perceives a beauty in it, puts a 
value upon it, and is fond of the property ol 
it. For this preference, no reason can be 
given, but that children are, by their con- 
titution, fond of brilliant colours, and ot 
regular figures- 

Suppose again that an expert mechanic 
views a well constructed machine. He sees 
all its parts to be made of the fittest mate- 
rials, and of the most proper form ; no- 
thing superfluous, nothing deficient ; every 
part adapted to its use, and the whole fitted 
in the most perfect manner to the end for 
which it is intended. He pronounces it to 
be a beautiful machine. He views it with 
the same agreeable emotion as the child 
viewed the pebble ; but he can give a reason 
for his judgment, and point out the particu- 
lar perfections of the object on which it is 
grounded. [746] 

Although the instinctive and the rational 
sense of beauty may be perfectly distin- 
guished in speculation, yet, in passing judg- 
ment upon particular objects, they are of ,en 
so mixed and confounded, that it is difficult 
to assign to each its own province. Nay, it 
[745 747] 



may often happen, that a judgment of the 
beauty of an object, which was at first 
merely instinctive, shall afterwards become 
rational, when we discover some latent per- 
fection of which that beauty in the object is 
a sign. 

As the sense of beauty may be distin- 
guished into instinctive and rational ; so I 
think beauty itself may be distinguished into 
original and derived. 

As some objects shine by their own light, 
and many more by light that is borrowed 
and reflected ; so I conceive the lustre of 
beauty in some objects is inherent and 
original, and in many others is borrowed 
and reflected. 

There is nothing more common in the 
sentiments of all mankind, and in the lan- 
guage of all nations, than what may be 
called a communication of attributes ; that 
is, transferring an attribute, from the sub- 
ject to which it properly belongs, to some 
related or resembling subject. 

The various objects which nature pre- 
sents to our view, even those that are most 
different in kind, have innumerable simili- 
tudes, relations, and analogies, which we 
contemplate with pleasure, and which lead 
us naturally to borrow words and attributes 
from one object to express what belongs to 
another. The greatest part of every lan- 
guage under heaven is made up of words 
borrowed from one thing, and applied to 
something supposed to have some relation 
or analogy to their first signification. [747] 

The attributes of body we ascribe to mind, 
and the attributes of mind to material ob- 
jects. To inanimate things we ascribe life, 
and even intellectual and moral qualities. 
And, although the qualities that are thus 
made common belong to one of the subjects 
in the proper sense, and to the other meta- 
phorically, these different senses are often 
so mixed in our imagination, as to produce 
the same sentiment with regard to both. 

It is therefore natural, and agreeable to 
the strain of human sentiments and of 
human language, that in many cases the 
beauty which originally and properly is in 
the thing signified, should be transferred 
to the sign ; that which is in the cause to 
the effect ; that which is in the end to the 
means ; and that which is in the agent to 
the instrument. 

If what was said in the last chapter of 
the distinction between the grandeur which 
we ascribe to qualities of mind, and that 
which we ascribe to material objects, be 
well founded, this distinction of the beauty 
of objects will easily be admitted as per- 
fectly analagous to it. I shall therefore 
only illustrate it by an example. 

There is nothing in the exterior of a man 
more lovely and more attractive than per- 
fect good breeding. But what is this good 



502 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay vm 



breeding ? It consists of all the external 
signs of due respect to our superiors, con- 
descension to our inferiors, politeness to all 
with whom we converse or have to do, 
joined in the fair sex with that delicacy of 
outward behaviour which becomes them. 
And how comes it to have such charms in 
the eyes of all mankind; for this reason 
only, as I apprehend, that it is a natural 
sign of that temper, and those affections 
and sentiments with regard to others, and 
with regard to ourselves, which are in 
themselves truly amiable and beautiful. 

This is the original, of which good breed- 
ing is the picture ; and it is the beauty of 
the original that is reflected to our sense 
by the picture. The beauty of good breed- 
ing, therefore, is not originally in the ex- 
ternal behaviour in which it consists, but is 
derived from the qualities of mind which it 
expresses. And though there may be good 
breeding without the amiable qualities of 
mind, its beauty is still derived from what 
it naturally expresses. [748] ' 

Having explained these distinctions of 
our sense of beauty into instinctive and 
rational, and of beauty itself into original 
and derived, I would now proceed to give 
a general view of those qualities in objects, 
to which we may justly and rationally 
ascribe beauty, whether original or derived. 
But here some embarrassment arises 
from the vague meaning of the word beauty, 
which I had occasion before to observe. 

Sometimes it is extended, so as to include 
everything that pleases a good taste, and 
so comprehends grandeur and novelty, as 
well as what in a more restricted sense is 
called beauty. At other times, it is even 
by good writers confined to the objects of 
sight, when they are either seen, or remem- 
bered, or imagined. Yet it is admitted by 
all men, that there are beauties in music ; 
that there is beauty as well as sublimity in 
composition, both in verse and in prose ; 
that there is beauty in characters, in affec- 
tions, and in actions. These are not ob- 
jects of sight ; and a man may be a good 
judge of beauty of various kinds, who has 
not the faculty of sight. 

To give a determinate meaning to a word 
so variously extended and restricted, I 
know no better way than what is suggested 
by the common division of the objects of 
taste into novelty, grandeur, and beauty. 
Novelty, it is plain, is no quality of the 
new object, but merely a relation which it 
has to the knowledge of the person to whom 
it is new. Therefore, if this general divi- 
sion be just, every quality in an object that 
pleases a good taste, must, in one degree 
or another, have either grandeur or beauty. 
It may still be difficult to fix the precise 
limit betwixt grandeur and beauty ; but 
they must together comprehend everything 



fitted by its nature to please a good taste — 
that is, every real perfection and excellence 
in the objects we contemplate. [749] 

In a poem, in a picture, in a piece of 
music, it is real excellence that pleases a 
good taste. In a person, every perfection 
of the mind, moral or intellectual, and every 
perfection of the body, gives pleasure to the 
spectator, as well as to the owner, when 
there is no envy nor malignity to destroy 
that pleasure. 

It is, therefore, in the scale of perfection 
and real excellence that we must look for 
what is either grand or beautiful in objects. 
What is the proper object of admiration is 
grand, and what is the proper object of love 
and esteem is beautiful. 

This, I think, is the only notion of beauty 
that corresponds with the division of the 
objects of taste which has been generally 
received by philosophers. And this con- 
nection of beauty with real perfection, was 
a capital doctrine of the Socratic school. 
It is often ascribed to Socrates, in the dia- 
logues of Plato and of Xenophon. 

We may, therefore, take a view, first, of 
those qualities of mind to which we may 
justly and rationally ascribe beauty, and 
then of the beauty we perceive in the objects 
of sense. We shall find, if I mistake not, 
that, in the first, original beauty is to be 
found, and that the beauties of the second 
class are derived from some relation they 
bear to mind, as the signs or expressions 
of some amiable mental quality, or as the 
effects of design, art, and wise contrivance. 

As grandeur naturally produces admira- 
tion, beauty naturally produces love. We 
may, therefore, justly ascribe beauty to those 
qualities which are the natural objects of 
love and kind affection. 

Of this kind chiefly are some of the moral 
virtues, which, in a peculiar manner, con- 
stitute a lovely character. Innocence, gen- 
tleness, condescension, humanity, natural 
affection, public spirit, and the whole train 
of the soft and gentle virtues : these qualities 
are amiable from their very nature, and on 
account of their intrinsic worth. [750] 

There are other virtues that raise admira. 
tion, and are, therefore, grand ; such as 
magnanimity, fortitude, self-command, su- 
periority to pain and labour, superiority to 
pleasure, and to the smiles of Fortune as 
well as to her frowns. 

These awful virtues constitute what is 
most grand in the human character ; the 
gentle virtues, what is most beautiful and 
lovely. As they are virtues, they draw the 
approbation of our moral faculty ; as they 
are becoming and amiable, they affect our 
sense of beauty. 

Next to the amiable moral virtues, there 

are many intellectual talents which have an 

intrinsic value, aud draw our love and esteem 

f 74-8-7 50] 



IV.J 



OF BEAUTY. 



503 



to those who possess them. Such are, 
knowledge, good sense, wit, humour, cheer- 
fulness, good taste, excellence in any of the 
fine arts, in eloquence, in dramatic action ; 
and, we may add, excellence in every art of 
peace or war that is useful in society. 

There are likewise talents which we refer 
to the body, which have an original beauty 
and comeliness ; such as health, strength, 
and agility, the usual attendants of youth ; 
skill in bodily exercises, and skill in the 
mechanic arts. These are real perfections 
of the man, as they increase his power, and 
render the body a fit instrument for the 
mind. 

I apprehend, therefore, that it is in the 
moral and intellectual perfections of mind, 
and in its active powers, that beauty origin- 
ally dwells ; and that from this as the foun- 
tain, all the beauty which we perceive in 
the visible world is derived. [751] 

This, I think, was the opinion of the 
ancient philosophers before-named ; and it 
has been adopted by Lord Shaftesbury and 
Dr Akenside among the moderns. 
" Mind, mind alone, bear witness, earth and heav'n ! 
The living fountains in itself contains 
Of beauteous and sublime. Here hand in hand 
Si paramount the graces. Here enthron'd, 
Celestial Venus, with divinest airs, 
Invites the soul to never-fading joy." — Akenside. 

But neither mind, nor any of its qualities 
or powers, is an immediate object of per- 
ception to man. We are, indeed, imme- 
diately conscious of the operations of our 
own mind ; and every degree of perfection 
in them gives the purest pleasure, with a 
proportional degree of self-esteem, so flat- 
tering to self-love, that the great difficulty 
is to keep it within just bounds, so that we 
may not think of ourselves above what we 
ought to think. 

Other minds we perceive only through 
the medium of material objects, on which 
their signatures are impressed. It is 
through this medium that we perceive life, 
activity, wisdom, and every moral and in- 
tellectual quality in other beings. The 
signs of those qualities are immediately 
perceived by the senses ; by them the qua- 
lities themselves are reflected to our under- 
standing ; and we are very apt to attribute 
to the sign the beauty or the grandeur 
which is properly and originally in the 
things signified. 

The invisible Creator, the Fountain of 
all perfection, hath stamped upon all his 
works signatures of his divine wisdom, 
power, and benignity, which are visible to 
all men. The works of men in science, in 
the arts of taste, and in the mechanical 
arts, bear the signatures of those qualities 
of mind which were employed in their pro- 
duction. Their external behaviour and 
conduct in life expresses the good or bad 
qualities of their mind. [752] 
[751-753] 



In every species of animals, we perceive 
by visible signs their instincts, their appe- 
tites, their affections, their sagacity. Even 
in the inanimate world, there are many 
things analogous to the qualities of mind ; 
so that there is hardly anything belonging 
to mind which may not be represented by 
images taken from the objects of sense ; 
and, on the other hand, every object of 
sense is beautified, by borrowing attire from 
the attributes of mind. 

Thus, the beauties of mind, though invi- 
sible in themselves, are perceived in the 
objects of sense, on which their image is 
impressed. 

If we consider, on the other hand, the 
qualities in sensible objects to which we 
ascribe beauty, I apprehend we shall find 
in all of them some relation to mind, and 
the greatest in those that are most beau- 
tiful. 

When we consider inanimate matter 
abstractly, as a substance endowed with 
the qualities of extension, solidity, divisi- 
bility, and mobility, there seems to be 
nothing in these qualities that affects our 
sense of beauty. But when we contem- 
plate the globe which we inhabit, as fitted 
by its form, by its motions, and by its fur- 
niture, for the habitation and support of an 
infinity of various orders of living creatures, 
from the lowest reptile up to man, we have 
a glorious spectacle indeed ! with which 
the grandest and the most beautiful struc- 
tures of human art can bear no compa- 
rison. 

The only perfection of dead matter is its 
being, by its various forms and qualities, 
so admirably fitted for the purposes of ani- 
mal life, and chiefly that of man. It fur- 
nishes the materials of every art that tends 
to the support or the embellishment of 
human life. By the Supreme Artist, it is 
organized in the various tribes of the veget- 
able kingdom, and endowed with a kind of 
life ; a work which human art cannot imi- 
tate, nor human understanding compre- 
hend. [753] 

In the bodies and various organs of the 
animal tribes, there is a composition of 
matter still more wonderful and more mys- 
terious, though we see it to be admirably 
adapted to the purposes and manner of life 
of every species. But in every form, unor- 
ganized, vegetable, or animal, it derives its 
beauty from the purposes to which it is 
subservient, or from the signs of wisdom 
or of other mental qualities which it ex- 
hibits. 

The qualities of inanimate matter, in 
which we perceive beauty, are — sound; 
colour, form, and motion ; the first an ob- 
ject of hearing, the other three of sight ; 
which we may consider in order. 

In a single note, sounded by a very fine 



501 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. [essay vm. 



voice, there is a beauty which we do not 
perceive in the same note, sounded by a bad 
voice or an imperfect instrument. I need 
not attempt to enumerate the perfections 
in a single note, which give beauty to it. 
Some of them have names in the science of 
music, and there perhaps are others which 
have no names. But I think it will be 
allowed, that every quality which gives 
beauty to a single note, is a sign of some 
perfection, either in the organ, whether it 
be the human voice or an instrument, or in 
the execution. The beauty of the sound 
is both the sign and the effect of this per- 
fection ; and the perfection of the cause is 
the only reason we can assign for the beauty 
of the effect. 

In a composition of sounds, or a piece of 
music, the beauty is either in the harmony, 
the melody, or the expression. The beauty 
of expression must be derived, either from 
the beauty of the thing expressed, or from 
the art and skill employed in expressing it 
properly. 

In harmony, the very names of concord 
and discord are metaphorical, and suppose 
some analogy between the relations of sound, 
to which they are figuratively applied, and 
the relations of minds and affections, which 
they originally and properly signify. [754] 

As far as I can judge by my ear, when 
two or more persons, of a good voice and 
ear, converse together in amity and friend- 
ship, the tones of their different voices are 
concordant, but become discordant when 
they give vent to angry passions ; so that, 
without hearing what is said, one may know 
by the tones of the different voices, whether 
they quarrel or converse amicably. This, 
indeed, is not so easily perceived in those 
who have been taught, by good-breeding, 
to suppress angry tones of voiee, even when 
they are angry, as in the lowest rank, who 
express their angry passions without any 
restraint. 

When discord arises occasionally in con- 
versation, but soon terminates in perfect 
amity, we receive more pleasure than from 
perfect unanimity. In like manner, in the 
harmony of music, discordant sounds are 
occasionally introduced, but it is always in 
o> der to give a relish to the most perfect 
concord that follows. 

Whether these analogies, between the 
harmony of a piece of music, and harmony 
in the intercourse of minds, be merely fanci- 
ful, or have any real foundation in fact, I 
submit to those who have a nicer ear, and 
have applied it to observations of this kind. 
If they have any just foundation, as they 
seem to me to have, they serve to account 
for the metaphorical application of the 
names of concord and discord to the rela- 
tions of sounds ; to account for the pleasure 
we have from harmony m music; and to 



shew, that the beauty of harmony is derived 
from the relation it has to agreeable affec- 
tions of mind. 

With regard to melody. J leave it to the 
adepts in the science of music, to determine 
whether music, composed according to the 
established rules of harmony and melody, 
can be altogether void of expression ; and 
whether music that has no expression can 
have any beauty. To me it seems, that 
every strain in melody that is agreeable, is 
an imitation of the tones of the human 
voice in the expression of some sentiment 
or passion, or an imitation of some other ob- 
ject in nature ; and that music, as well as 
poetry, is an imitative art. [755] 

The sense of beauty in the colours, and 
in the motions of inanimate objects, is, I 
believe, in some cases instinctive. We see 
that children and savages are pleased with 
brilliant colours and sprightly motions. In 
persons of an improved and rational taste, 
there are many sources from which colours 
and motions may derive their beauty. They, 
as well as the forms of objects, admit of 
regularity and variety. The motions pro- 
duced by machinery, indicate the perfection 
or imperfection of the mechanism, and may 
be better or worse adapted to their end, and 
from that derive their beauty or deformity. 

The colours of natural objects, are com- 
monly signs of some good or bad quality in 
the object ; or they may suggest to the 
imagination something agreeable or dis- 
agreeable. 

In dress and furniture, fashion has a con- 
siderable influence on the preference we give 
to one colour above another. 

A number of clouds of different and ever- 
changing hue, seen on the ground of a serene 
azure sky, at the going down of the sun, 
present to the eye of every man a glorious 
spectacle. It is hard to say, whether we 
should call it grand or beautiful. It is both 
in a high degree. Clouds towering above 
clouds, variously tinged, according as they 
approach nearer to the direct rays of the 
sun, enlarge our conceptions of the regions 
above us. They give us a view of the fur- 
niture of those regions, which, in an un- 
clouded air, seem to be a perfect void ; but 
are now seen to contain the stores of wind 
and rain, bound up for the present, but to 
be poured down upon the earth in due sea- 
son. Even the simple rustic does not look 
upon this beautiful sky, merely as a show 
to please the eye, but as a happy omen of 
fine weather to come. 

The proper arrangement of colour, and of 
light and shade, is one of the chief beauties 
of painting ; but this beauty is greatest, 
when that arrangement gives the most dis- 
tinct, the most natural, and the most agree- 
able image of that which the painter intend- 
ed to represent. [756] 

[754-756] 



CHAP. IV.] 



OF BEAUTY. 



505 



If we consider, in the last place, the 
beauty of form or figure in inanimate ob- 
jects, this, according to Dr Hutcheson, re- 
sults from regularity, mixed with variety. 
Here, it ought to be observed, that regu- 
larity, in all cases, expresses design and 
art : for nothing regular was ever the work 
of chance ; and where regularity is joined 
with variety, it expresses design more 
strongly. Besides, it has been justly ob- 
served, that regular figures are more easily 
and more perfectly comprehended by the 
mind than the irregular, of which we can 
never form an adequate conception. 

Although straight lines and plain surfaces 
have a beauty from their regularity, they 
admit of no variety, and, therefore, are 
beauties of the lowest order. Curve lines 
and surfaces admit of infinite variety, joined 
with every degree of regularity ; and, there- 
fore, in many cases, excel in beauty those 
that are straight. 

But the beauty arising from regularity 
and variety, must always yield to that which 
arises from the fitness of the form for the 
end intended. In everything made for an 
end, the form must be adapted to that end ; 
and everything in the form that suits the 
end, is a beauty ; everything that unfits it 
for its end, is a deformity. 

The forms of a pillar, of a sword, and of 
a balance are very different. Each may 
have great beauty ; but that beauty is de- 
rived from the fitness of the form and of 
the matter for the purpose intended. [757] 

Were we to consider the form of the earth 
itself, and the various furniture it contains, 
of the inanimate kind ; its distribution into 
land and sea, mountains and valleys, rivers 
and springs of water, the variety of soils 
that cover its surface, and of mineral and 
metallic substances laid up within it, the air 
that surrounds it, the vicissitudes of day 
and night, and of the seasons ; the beauty 
of all these, which indeed is superlative, 
consists in this, that they bear the most 
lively and striking impression of the wisdom 
and goodness of their Author, in contriving 
them so admirably for the use of man, and 
of their other inhabitants. 

The beauties of the vegetable kingdom 
are far superior to those of inanimate mat- 
ter, in any form which human art can give 
it. Hence, in all ages, men have been fond 
to adorn their persons and their habitations 
with the vegetable productions of nature. 

The beauties of the field, of the forest, 
and of the flower-garden, strike a child long 
before he can reason. He is delighted with 
what he sees ; but he knows not why. This 
is instinct, but it is not confined to child- 
hood ; it continues through all the stages of 
life. It leads the florist, the botanist, the 
philosopher, to examine and compare the 
objects which Nature, by this powerful in- 
(_757, 758] 



stinct, recommends to his attention. By 
degrees, he becomes a critic in beauties of 
this kind, and can give a reason why he 
prefers one to another. In every species, 
he sees the greatest beauty in the plants or 
flowers that are most perfect in their kind — 
which have neither suffered from unkindly 
soil nor inclement weather ; which have not 
been robbed of their nourishment by other 
plants, nor hurt by any accident. When he 
examines the internal structure of those 
productions of Nature, and traces them 
from their embryo state in the seed to their 
maturity, he sees a thousand beautiful con- 
trivances of Nature, which feast his under- 
standing more thau their external form 
delighted his eye. 

Thus, every beauty in the vegetable 
creation, of which he has formed any ra- 
tional judgment, expresses some perfection 
in the object, or some wise contrivance in 
its Author. [758] 

In the animal kingdom, we perceive still 
greater beauties than in the vegetable- Here 
we observe life, and sense, and activity, 
various instincts and affections, and, in 
many cases, great sagacity. These are 
attributes of mind, and have an original 
beauty. 

As we allow to brute animals a thinking 
principle or mind, though far inferior to 
that which is in man ; and as, in many of 
their intellectual and active powers, they 
very much resemble the human species, 
their actions, their motions, and even their 
looks, derive a beauty from the powers of 
thought which they express. 

There is a wonderful variety in their 
manner of life ; and we find the powers they 
possess, their outward form, and their in- 
ward structure, exactly adapted to it. In 
every species, the more perfectly any indi- 
vidual is fitted for its end and manner of 
life, the greater is its beauty. 

In a race-horse, everything that expresses 
agility, ardour, and emulation, gives beauty 
to the animal. In a pointer, acuteness of 
scent, eagerness on the game, and tractable- 
ness, are the beauties of the species. A 
sheep derives its beauty from the fineness 
and quantity of its fleece ; and in the wild 
animals, every beauty is a sign of their 
perfection in their kind. 

It is an observation of the celebrated 
Linnaeus, that, in the vegetable kingdom, 
the poisonous plants have commonly a lurid 
and disagreeable appearance to the eye, of 
which he gives many instances. I appre- 
hend the observation may be extended to 
the animal kingdom, in which we commonly 
see something shocking to the eye in the 
noxious and poisonous animals. 

The beauties which anatomists and phy- 
siologists describe in the internal structure 
of the various tribes of animals ; in th« 



506 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay 



organs of sense, of nutrition, and of motion, 
are expressive of wise design and contriv- 
ance, in fitting them for the various kinds 
of life for which they are intended. [759] 

Thus, I think, it appears that the beauty 
which we perceive in the inferior animals, 
is expressive, either of such perfections as 
their several natures may receive, or ex- 
pressive of wise design in Him who made 
them, and that their beauty is derived from 
the perfections which it expresses. 

But of all the objects of sense, the most 
striking and attractive beauty is perceived 
in the human species, and particularly in 
the fair sex. 

Milton represents Satan himself, in sur- 
veying the furniture of this globe, as struck 
with the beauty of the first happy pair. 

" Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, 
Godlike erect! with native honour clad 
In naked majesty, seem'd lords of all. 
And worthy seem'd, for in th ir looks divine, 
The image of their glorious Maker, shone 
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure; 
Severe, but in true filial freedom placM, 
Whence true authority in man ; though both 
Not equal, as their sex not equal seem'd, 
For contemplation he, and valour form'd, 
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace." 

In this well-known passage of Milton, 
we see that this great poet derives the 
beauty of the first pair in Paradise from 
those expressions of moral and intellectual 
qualities which appeared in their outward 
form and demeanour. 

The most minute and systematical ac- 
count of beauty in the human species, and 
particularly in the fair sex, I have met 
with, is in " Crito ; or, a Dialogue on 
Beauty," said to be written by the author 
of " Polymetis,"* and republished by Dods- 
ley in his collection of fugitive pieces. 
[760] 

I shall borrow from that author some 
observations, which, I think, tend to shew 
that the beauty of the human body is 
derived from the sigus it exhibits of some 
perfection of the mind or person. 

All that can be called beauty in the 
human species may be reduced to these 
four heads : colour, form, expression, and 
grace. The two former may be called the 
body, the two latter the soul of beauty. 

The beauty of colour is not owing solely 
to the natural liveliness of flesh-colour and 
red, nor to the much greater charms they 
receive from being properly blended toge- 
ther ; but is also owing, in some degree, to 
the idea they carry with them of good 
health, without which all beauty grows 
languid and less engaging, and with which 
it always recovers an additional strength 
and lustre. This is supported by the autho- 
rity of Cicero- Venustas .et pulchritudo 
corporis secerni non potest a valetudine. 

* Spence, under the name of Sir Harry leau- 
mont — H. 



Here I observe, that, as the colour of the 
body is very different in different climates, 
every nation preferring the colour of its 
climate, and as, among us, one man prefers 
a fair beauty, another a brunette, without 
being able to give any reason for this pre- 
ference ; this diversity of taste has no stand- 
ard in the common principles of human 
nature, but must arise from something that 
is different in different nations, and - in dif- 
ferent individuals of the same nation. 

I observed before, that fashion, habit, 
associations, and perhaps some peculiarity 
of constitution, may have great influence 
upon this internal sense, as well as upon 
the external. Setting aside the judgments 
arising from such causes, there seems to 
remain nothing that, according to the com- 
mon judgment of mankind, can be called 
beauty in the colour of the species, but 
what expresses perfect health and liveli- 
ness, and in the fair sex softness and deli- 
cacy ; and nothing that can be called deform- 
ity but what indicates disease and decline. 
And if this be so, it follows, that the beauty 
of colour is derived from the perfections 
which it expresses. This, however, of all 
the ingredients of beauty, is the least. [761 ] 

The next in order is form, or proportion 
of parts. The most beautiful form, as the 
author thinks, is that which indicates deli- 
cacy and softness in the fair sex, and in the 
male either strength or agility. The beau- 
ty of form, therefore, lies all in expression. 

The third ingredient, which has more 
power than either colour or form, he calls 
expression, and observes, that it is only the 
expression of the tender and kind passions 
that gives beauty ; that all the cruel and 
unkind ones add to deformity ; and that, on 
this account, good nature may very justly 
be said to be the best feature, even in the 
finest face. Modesty, sensibility, and 
sweetness, blended together, so as either 
to enliven or to correct each other, give al- 
most as much attraction as the passions are 
capable of adding to a very pretty face. 

It is owing, says the author, to the great 
force of pleasingness which attends all the 
kinder passions, that lovers not only seem, 
but really are, more beautiful to each other 
than they are to the rest of the world ; be- 
cause, when they are together, the most pleas- 
ing passions are more frequently exerted in 
each of their faces than they are in either 
before the rest of the world. There is then, 
as a French author very well expresses it, 
a soul upon their countenances, which does 
not appear when they are absent from one 
another, or even in company that lays a re- 
straint upon their features. 

There is a great difference in the same 

face, according as the person is in a better 

or a worse humour, or more or less lively. 

The best complexion, the finest features, 

[759-761] 



IV.] 



OF BEAUTY. 



507 



and the exactest shape, without anything 
of the mind expressed in the face, is insipid 
and unmoving. The finest eyes in the 
world, witli an excess of malice or rage in 
them, will grow shocking. The passions 
can give beauty without the assistance of 
colour or form, and take it away where 
these have united most strongly to give it ; 
and therefore this part of beauty is greatly 
superior to the other two. [762] 

The last and noblest part of beauty is 
grace, which the author thinks undefin- 
able. 

Nothing causes love so generally and ir- 
resistibly as grace. Therefore, in the my- 
thology of the Greeks and Romans, the 
Graces were the constant attendants of 
Venus the goddess of love. Grace is like 
the cestus of the same goddess, which was 
supposed to comprehend everything that 
was winning and engaging, and to create 
love by a secret and inexplicable force, like 
that of some magical charm. 

There are two kinds of grace — the majes- 
tic and the familiar ; the first more com- 
manding, the last more delightful and en- 
gaging. The Grecian painters and sculp- 
tors used to express the former most strongly 
in the looks and attitudes of their Miner- 
vas, and the latter in those of Venus. This 
distinction is marked in the description of 
the personages of Virtue and Pleasure in 
the ancient fable of the Choice of Hercules. 
■• Graceful, bin each with different grace they move, 
This striking sacred awe, that softer winning lov:." 

In the persons of Adam and Eve in Pa- 
radise, Milton has made the same distinc- 
tion — 

" For contemplation he, and valour formed, 
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace." [7631 
Though grace be so difficult to be defined, 
there are two things that hold universally 
with relation to it. First, There is no 
grace without motion ; some genteel or 
pleasing motion, either of the whole body 
or of some limb, or at least some feature. 
Hence, in the face, grace appears only on 
those features that aremovaMe, and change 
with the various emotions and sentiments 
of the mind, such as the eyes and eye- 
brows, the mouth and parts adjacent. 
When Venus appeared to her son ^Eneas 
in disguise, and, after some conversation 
with him, retired, it was by the grace of 
her motion in retiring that he discovered 
her be to truly a goddess. 

" Dixit, et avertens rosea cervice refulsit, 
Ambrosiasque comae divinum vertice odorem 
Spiravere; pedes vestis defluxit ad imos; 
Et vera incessu patuit dea. Ille, ubi matrem 
Agnovit," &c. 

A second observation is, That there can 
be no grace with impropriety, or that no- 
thing can be graceful that is not adapted to 
the character and situation of the person. 

From these observations, which appear 
[726-765.] 



to me to be just, we may, I think, conclude, 
that grace, as far as -it is visible, consists of 
those motions, either of the whole body, or 
of a part or feature, which express the most 
perfect propriety of conduct and sentiment 
in an amiable character. 

Those motions must be different in dif- 
ferent characters ; they must vary with 
every variation of emotion and sentiment ; 
they may express either dignity or respect, 
confidence or reserve, love or just resent- 
ment, esteem or indignation, zeal or indif- 
ference. Every passion, sentiment, or emo- 
tion, that in its nature and degree is just 
and proper, and corresponds perfectly with 
the character of the person, and with the oc- 
casion, is what may we call the soul of grace. 
The body or visible part consists of those 
emotions and features which give the true 
and unaffected expression of this soul. [764] 

Thus, I think, all the ingredients of 
human beauty, as they are enumerated and 
described by this ingenious author, termi- 
nate in expression : they either express 
some perfection of the body, as a part of the 
man, and an instrument of the mind, or 
some amiable quality or attribute of the 
mind itself. 

It cannot, indeed, be denied, that the 
expression of a fine countenance may be 
unnaturally disjoined from the amiable qua- 
lities which it naturally expresses : but we 
presume the contrary till we have clear evi- 
dence ; and even then we pay homage to 
the expression, as we do to the throne when 
it happens to be unworthily filled. 

Whether what I have offered to shew, 
that all the beauty of the objects of sense 
is borrowed, and derived from the beauties 
of mind which it expresses or s ggests to 
the imagination, be well-founded or not, I 
hope this terrestrial Venus will not be 
deemed less worthy of the homage which 
has always been paid to her, by being con- 
ceived more nearly allied to the celestial 
than she has commonly been represented. 

To make an end of this subject, tas'e 
seems to be progressive as man is. Child- 
ren, when refreshed by sleep, and at ease 
from pain and hunger, are disposed to at- 
tend to the objects about them ; they are 
pleased with brilliant colours, gaudy orna- 
ments, regular forms, cheerful counte- 
nances, noisy mirth and glee. Such is 
the taste of childhood, which we must con- 
clude to be given for wise purposes. A 
great part of the happiness of that period 
of life is derived from it ; and, therefore, it 
ought to be indulged. It leads them to 
attend to objects which they may afterwards 
find worthy of their attention. It puts them 
upon exerting their infant faculties of body 
and mind, which, by such exertions, are 
daily strengthened and improved. [765] 

As they advance in years and in under- 



508 



ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 



[essay viiiv 



standing, other beauties attract their atten- 
tion, which, by their novelty or superiority, 
throw a shade upon those they formerly ad- 
mired. They delight in feats of agility, 
strength, and art ; they love those that ex- 
cel in them, and strive to equal them. In 
the tales and fables they hear, they begin to 
discern beauties of mind. Some characters 
and actions appear lovely, others give dis- 
gust. The intellectual and moral powers 
begin to open, and, if cherished by favour- 
able circumstances, advance gradually in 
strength, till they arrive at that degree 
of perfection to which human nature, in its 
present state, is limited. 

In our progress from infancy to maturity, 
our faculties open in a regular order ap- 
pointed by Nature ; the meanest first, those 
of more dignity in succession, unti! the mo- 
ral and rational powers finish the man. 
Every faculty furnishes new notions, brings 
new beauties into view, and enlarges the 
province of taste; so that we may say, 
there is a taste of childhood, a taste of 
youth, and a manly taste. Each is beau- 
tiful in its season ; but not so much so, 
when carried beyond its season. Not that 
the man ought to dislike the things that 
please the child or the youth, but to put 
less value upon them, compared with other 
beauties, with which he ought to be ac- 
quainted. 

Our moral and rational powers justly 
claim dominion over the whole man. Even 
taste is not exempted from their authority ; 
it must be subject to that authority in 
every case wherein we pretend to reason or 
dispute about matters of taste ; it is the voice 
of reason that our love or our admiration 



ought to be proportioned to the merit of the 
object. When it is not grounded on real 
worth, it must be the effect of constitution, 
or of some habit, or casual association. A 
fond mother may see a beauty in her dar- 
ling child, or a fond author in his work, to 
which the rest of the world are blind. In 
such cases, the "affection is pre-engaged, 
and, as it were, bribes the judgment, to 
make the object worthy of that affection. 
For the mind cannot be easy in putting a 
value upon an object beyond what it con- 
ceives to be due. When affection is not 
carried away by some natural or acquired 
bias, it naturally is and ought to be led by 
the judgment. [766] 



As, in the division which I have followed 
of our intellectual powers, I mentioned 
Moral Perception and Consciousness, the 
reader -may expect that some reason should 
be given, why they are not treated of in 
this place. 

As to Consciousness, what I think neces- 
sary to be said upon it has been already 
said, Essay vi., chap. 5. As to the faculty 
of moral perception, it is indeed a most im- 
portant part of human understanding, and 
well worthy of the most attentive considera- 
tion, since without it we could have no con- 
ception of right and wrong, of duty and 
moral obligation, and since the first princi- 
ples of morals, upon which all moral rea- 
soning must be grounded, are its immediate 
dictates ; but, as it is an active as well as 
an intellectual power, and has an immediate 
relation to the other active powers of the 
mind, I apprehend that it is proper to defer 
the consideration of it till these be explained. 

[766] 






